


dredging the ruins of who you thought you’d be

by eneiryu



Series: the ruins of a softer world [4]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: M/M, Outdoor Sex, Post Traumatic Stress Reactions, The Reasons We Learn to Fight, Trusting Others Starts With Trusting Yourself
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-25
Updated: 2019-11-25
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:14:53
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 35,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21564367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eneiryu/pseuds/eneiryu
Summary: Ignore Liam’s armchair psychology: the problem starts because Nolan is there when Scott and Alec get into a fanged-mouth fight in the school library after hours.
Relationships: Alec/Nolan (Teen Wolf)
Series: the ruins of a softer world [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1171352
Comments: 28
Kudos: 109





	dredging the ruins of who you thought you’d be

**Author's Note:**

> Apparently my kink is _character growth_ , so here--have 35,000 words of it.
> 
> Credit to Thiam/Nalec/Morey Love bot, who asked for: "a small series (one shot? who knows! whatever you have in mind) where Nolan is struggling with his fear of supernatural creatures and Alec is struggling with his new found wolf. The plot being alec learning control and alec and nolan teaching each other they aren’t monsters." Hopefully the delay turns out to be worth the wait.
> 
> This will probably make the most sense following [that storm left us shipwrecked](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16821097) and [get up, get out, get free](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17972072), but it's probably also not strictly speaking necessary.

The book Deaton needs in order to tell them more about the possible hag infestation is in Beacon Hills High School’s library, because of course it is.

Deaton had probably given a reasonable explanation for its presence there, but Nolan had been distracted by the press of Alec’s fingers against his hip-bones through his jeans, Alec stood up against his back in a corner of the animal clinic and hiding a wicked grin against Nolan’s neck at the way that the pressure had caused Nolan to shiver. Across the exam table Scott had given him a dry look, but Alec had just hooked his chin over Nolan’s shoulder and given Scott a winsome smile; Nolan had seen it out of the corner of his eye. Scott had laughed under his breath, expression exasperated, if begrudgingly fond, and then _he’d_ gotten distracted by the way that Theo had suddenly bared a mouthful of fangs at Liam, Liam cackling and yanking his prodding fingers away.

Nolan spends the ride over to the library bemusedly fighting off Alec’s wandering hands in Theo’s truck’s backseat, occasionally turning his head to let Alec kiss him as a consolation prize and completely ignoring Liam in the passenger seat complaining and flicking pennies from Theo’s cup holder full of spare change at them, because Liam is a _hypocrite_ ; once every few minutes Theo has to return one of Liam’s _own_ wandering hands to him, Liam smirking and squirming and putting it right back. Theo glares at him with golden eyes when he does it, but Theo also ends up undermining his own position atop his high horse when he takes advantage of a red light to grab a fistful of Liam’s shirt and pull him into a quick but _incredibly_ thorough kiss before shoving him back and ordering him to _stay_.

“What is _with_ all of you?” Nolan mumbles laughingly against Alec’s mouth, and neither expects nor receives an answer when Alec just grins and leans further over him, deepening the kiss and only pulling back when Liam yells an outraged protest and leans over the front seat to smack him in the shoulder.

Scott and Malia are already in the parking lot when they pull in, loitering next to the Jeep and talking with Mason and Corey, the latter of whom is still wearing a collared shirt buttoned up to his throat and a slightly poleaxed expression. Liam squints at him through the windshield and then scoffs.

“Not sure why he’s still so freaked out. Mason’s parents think he’s the greatest thing since sliced bread,” Liam mutters; Theo just rolls his eyes and shuts off the engine, shoves Liam towards the passenger door before following him out and slamming it shut behind them both.

“Think Scott will kill us if we just stay here?” Alec murmurs when they’re alone in the cab, grinning at Nolan when Nolan looks over at him.

Nolan just snorts a laugh and darts in to press his lips to Alec’s before pulling back and reaching for his door as he answers, “I think _Theo_ will _definitely_ kill us.”

“Like he’s got room to talk,” Alec grumbles as he slides out after him, “considering what he and _Liam—_ ”

Nolan turns and slaps a hand over his mouth, making a face and shaking his head as he says, “Uh-uh, I don’t want to know.” Then, slyly: “It’s not like both of us need to be traumatized.”

Alec’s face twists in comically exaggerated outrage and he lunges for Nolan, who yelps and dodges and then darts forward a few feet so he can put Malia between them, using her as a shield. Malia barks an irritated _hey_ , but when Alec tries to slide past her she catches him in a headlock, grinning wildly as he laughs a protest and they both stumble. He makes a grab for one of her legs and they both go down in a tangle of limbs, Liam cheering and yelling _ten bucks on Malia_ as Alec tries to squirm out from underneath her. It doesn’t work; Malia drops all her weight down flat to pin him—Alec _oofing_ at the pressure—and Liam flops down beside them and smacks the ground once, twice, three times, before hopping right back up with Malia’s arm held up high in his grip in victory.

“ _Children_ ,” Scott insists, going for stern but missing the mark because his mouth is split in a wide smile that only gets wider when Malia tugs loose of Liam’s grip and walks straight into him, her face tilted up as she grins up at him. But after leaning down to quickly kiss her, he looks back up and out and orders, “ _Book_. We are here for the _book_.”

“Sir, yes, sir!” Liam barks, faux-military strict, and then ignores both Scott’s and Theo’s unimpressed eye-rolls to dart over and start chattering at Mason as Mason asks, _so what is this book we’re looking for?_ , Liam walking backwards and bouncing a little on his toes as he fills in Mason and Corey.

Nolan trails after Scott, Malia, and Theo until he gets to Alec’s side—Alec still splayed out on the ground and grinning up at him—and then he pauses, prods Alec with a toe. “You coming?”

Alec cocks his head consideringly for a second and then—before Nolan can react and startle backwards—he _explodes_ upwards in a sudden burst of motion, tripping Nolan and catching him against his chest as he starts to fall. By the time Nolan has managed to let out a surprised squawk, they’ve already hit the ground, Alec cushioning Nolan’s fall with his own body and then rolling them instantly over so he can press Nolan into the rough surface of the asphalt beneath them.

“Show-off,” Nolan mutters, but he can feel the flush up high on his cheeks and the swirl of arousal low in his gut, Alec’s hips pressed up tight against his own. Alec leans back and grins at him below bright, gold-flared eyes, and then he ducks his head to lick into Nolan’s mouth when Nolan drops it open for him; presses harder against him when Nolan makes a small, hitched sound at the discovery of Alec’s too-sharp teeth.

“Alec, Nolan, c’m—oh, _seriously?_ ” Scott starts to call, sliding almost immediately into a complaint. “I will _find a hose_.”

“Sorry, Scott,” Alec answers, leaning back from where he’d moved to run his lips lightly over the scar on Nolan’s neck, but he looks anything and everything _but_ sorry; his eyes are still burning gold and some of the playfulness has disappeared from his expression, and Nolan squirms reflexively underneath him as Alec’s look sends heat rolling through him.

The sun is starting to set when they finally make it through the library doors, so Liam goes hunting for the panel of controls for the overhead lights while the rest of them head further inside. Deaton had thought the book would be in the mythology section, but unsurprisingly it isn’t there; Nolan thinks back to the stack of library books that Monroe had had piled in her office and has to fight off a shudder, steps a little closer to Alec when Alec glances back at him, brow furrowed.

“All right, well,” Scott decides, and gestures around to the rest of the shelves with an apologetic grimace. “Everyone spread out and start looking for it, I guess.”

Liam blows a raspberry but gets over his annoyance easily enough, at least based on the way that he snags one of Theo’s hands and drags him off down one of the rows. Scott’s expression goes resigned as he watches them disappear, but he just sighs and then turns to smile at Malia, tilts his head up towards the stairs that lead up to the second floor and follows after her as she starts heading up.

“We’ll start over there,” Mason offers, pointing towards the far corner of the room. “Meet you in the middle.”

Nolan nods and watches him and Corey disappear into the stacks before turning to Alec and saying, “I guess that leaves this corner for us.”

“Guess so,” Alec agrees, a small smile crinkling the corners of his eyes; the heat isn’t gone from them, but it’s banked, a bit, and Nolan smiles back, threads their fingers together and heads off down a row.

Ten minutes of browsing later and Mason thinks he’s found something, but it turns out to be the wrong book. Fifteen minutes after that Nolan—blushing and more than aware of Malia smirking behind Scott’s shoulder—has to briefly find Scott to double-check some of the details that Deaton had given them about the book, his mind pulling up the sense-memory of Alec’s insistent fingers instead when he tries to recall whether Deaton had said the cover would be blue or black.

And then, at some point after _that_ , Scott leans over the upper balcony railing and yells, “I don’t think the book is in Theo’s tonsils, Liam!”

“Just trying to be thorough!” Liam sing-songs innocently back, and Nolan hides his laughter by burying it against Alec’s shoulder, burrows a little further against it when he feels Alec’s amused grin against the top of his head.

Pulling back, Nolan smiles up at him and says, “C’mon, this row is a bust,” and takes his hand to start leading him out of their current row and into the next.

But partway there he ends up jerked to a stumbling stop. Confused, Nolan turns to look at Alec over his shoulder and finds him stood stock-still and staring up and out of the wide, floor-to-ceiling windows of the library, eyes gone hooded and expression gone slack. All at once his fingers still threaded through Nolan spasm, and hard enough that Nolan hisses out a pained sound and glances down at them. When he looks back up, Alec is no longer looking out the windows, but at him.

“Alec,” Nolan breathes, adrenaline starting to flood through him as his instincts start to stir.

And then Alec’s eyes bleed gold, and his mouth opens around a mouthful of fangs, and Nolan’s eyes widen as Alec uses the hand he’s still got around Nolan’s—his fully-shifted claws puncturing the skin covering the back of Nolan’s palm—to hold him fast as he raises his other hand, claws glinting in the harsh fluorescent lighting.

“No, wait—Alec!” Nolan shouts, throwing his other arm up to shield his face as he sees Alec’s clawed hand start to arc down towards him.

But it doesn’t land; Nolan hears a ferocious snarl and then finds himself yanked backwards just as a dark, blurred shape materializes in front of him and slams into Alec, sending him flying backwards. Nolan barely notices the fierce burst of pain that accompanies the move, Alec’s claws ripping free of the back of his hand; he’s too focused on Theo stood braced in front of him, seeming huge and imposing and with his shoulders heaving as he stares down Alec across the room, who scrambles quickly to his feet and snarls at him.

“—ou okay? Nolan. _Nolan_ ,” Nolan jerks as he realizes that Liam is saying his name, and snaps his head around to look at him, one of Liam’s hands still on his back from where he’d wrapped an arm around Nolan’s waist to pull him back and away from Alec.

“I—” Nolan starts to stammer, but then he cuts off, because Alec launches himself forward at Theo, expression twisted in a savage snarl and his clawed hands extended out.

Theo catches him and executes some kind of twist to pivot Alec up and over one of his hips before slamming him into the ground. Alec gives a wounded, animal cry at the impact but is back to struggling in an instant, his clawed hands striking out at Theo’s face as Theo grimaces and kneels down heavily on his chest, doing his best to pin him.

“Scott!” Theo yells. “Jesus fucking—!” He swears as one of Alec’s attacks catches him across the side of the neck. “ _Scott!_ ”

Liam had jolted forward when Alec’s strike had landed, his eyes on the blood starting to stream down Theo’s neck and shoulder, but he jerks to a stop when a dark shape suddenly lands in front of them. Scott wastes no time in lunging forward to try and help Theo contain Alec, but it winds up doing more harm than good; as Scott gets close, Alec suddenly heaves Theo up and off of him and directly into Scott, sending them both tumbling backwards.

“Fuck, _fuck_ ,” Liam breathes, and darts forward in front of Nolan; Nolan realizes that he’s shifted when Liam spreads his now-clawed hands out wide and _roars_.

Nolan is startled out of staring at the confrontation when he’s suddenly jerked backwards, though, the world going a strange, blurry green, like someone had dropped a photo filter over his vision. He whirls around to look at Corey, who has one hand around Nolan’s wrist and one hand around Mason’s, both of their expressions wide and shellshocked. They all stare at each other in stunned silence for a few seconds, and then they all whip back around to look as Liam shouts in pain, one of Alec’s clawed hands raking across his stomach and sending splatters of blood across the library floor.

In the next instant Scott and Theo are _on_ Alec, dragging him back and away from Liam and holding his struggling arms fast as he snaps and snarls, trying to thrash his way out of their grasp. Nolan can see both Scott’s and Theo’s gritting teeth, can spot the tendon straining in Theo’s neck even underneath the sheen of blood; he starts to bring a horrified hand up to cover his mouth and only stops when he feels pressure, Corey tugging Nolan’s hand back down so he doesn’t lose his grip and send him visible again.

“Alec!” Scott is trying, his eyes a bright, burning red and the muscles of his forearms popping as he fights to keep ahold of Alec’s struggling limbs. “Alec, stop! It’s _us!_ ”

But Alec either doesn’t understand him or doesn’t—or _can’t_ —care; he manages to yank free of Scott’s hold and turns fully to Theo, striking out and forcing Theo to lunge backwards to avoid taking the full force of Alec’s attack across his face. It leaves Alec free and unrestrained, and he darts his head quickly around, his nose in the air— _looking for us_ , Nolan finds himself thinking blankly, _looking for_ me—and then he snarls in frustration and turns—turns for the _doors_ ; for the exit leading out into the outside world.

Theo makes a lunging grab at him but gets thrown back, and hard enough that he slams into one of the rows of heavy wooden bookshelves and crumples to the ground, stunned. Liam gasps out a protest and darts over towards him, while Scott—Scott opens his mouth and _roars_. Even Nolan feels the sound in his _bones_ , Liam and Corey and even Mason, too, all flinching. But while Alec stumbles a few feet, he doesn’t stop, just turns around and roars back, him and Scott facing off against each other across the library; Nolan’s breath freezes in his chest as he stares at them, fear and memory—fear blooming insidiously out _from_ a memory—slamming into him.

And then a quick, blurred shape goes darting past him and Mason and Corey still hidden away thanks to Corey’s power, and goes straight towards Alec’s hulking form. Alec’s fierce expression morphs into one of confusion as Malia seemingly materializes in front of him, but he’s too slow to react; she drops into a crouch and strikes a foot out, her booted heel landing unerringly against the side of Alec’s left calf, just below his knee.

Alec _shrieks_ as his leg snaps.

He goes down in a heavy sprawl of limbs, these low, wounded whines echoing out from his throat. Malia and Scott are on him in an instant, kneeling down on his arms to keep him from moving, one of Malia’s hands on Alec’s broken leg as they watch him intently. Alec snaps at them, his struggles starting to renew as his healing kicks in, but Malia presses _down_ ; Alec chokes on a cry and convulses, once, Malia’s movement apparently re-breaking the bone.

“Alec. _Alec_ ,” Scott is yelling, one of his still-clawed hands on Alec’s face as he forces Alec to look at him. “C’mon, Alec. Fight this, c’mon.”

“Scott, this isn’t working,” Malia interrupts, voice strained as she struggles to keep Alec pinned.

Scott hesitates for a few seconds longer, and then he bites off a curse, rearing up—Nolan able to see the regret in his eyes even with the distance and through the green-blurred sheen of Corey’s power—before slamming an elbow down across Alec’s temple. Alec immediately stops thrashing, out cold, but Scott and Malia still give it five, ten, fifteen long seconds before they relax, slumping sideways off of him.

“God _damn_ it,” Scott swears, and covers his face with his hands; Nolan watches as Malia reaches over across Alec’s prone body and puts a hand on his shoulder, smiles weakly at him when he looks over at her.

And then Nolan jumps and startles when—between one blink and the next—the world returns to its rightful set of colors, the filter of Corey’s power yanked away as Corey drops the camouflage hiding him and Mason and Nolan. He glances over, wide-eyed, when Mason groans and folds in half with his hands on his knees, then snaps his head up and around to look at Liam as Liam approaches them, half-dragging a still-dazed and head-lolling Theo, one of Theo’s arms held fast across his shoulders. Corey hurriedly reaches forward and gets his own shoulder underneath Theo’s other arm, and between the two of them, they get him carefully lowered down to the ground. Theo gives Corey a pained, grateful smile and then gives up and falls backwards onto his back with an exhausted, “ _fuck_.”

Liam flops down next to him, his head landing accidentally-or-not on one of Theo’s outstretched arms as he mutters, “We forgot about the full moon. I cannot _believe_ we forgot about the full moon. We’re _idiots_.”

“It’s the first night,” Theo slurs drunkenly back, “And his control has been spotless the last few months.”

“Tell that to my stomach, and the side of your face, and _Nolan_ ,” Liam grumbles, and then something seems to occur to him and he squints up at Nolan before rolling upright and starting to reach for—for Nolan’s wounded hand. “Hey, speaking of. You o—”

He cuts off abruptly, eyes wide and hand frozen around empty air, because—because Nolan had just yanked his hand out of Liam’s reach, instantly and without thought. Liam stares up at him and Nolan stares back, but his mind is one big, cacophonous mess of the feeling of Alec’s claws piercing the back of his hand, and the sight of Liam’s blood splattering on the floor, and the overwhelming wall of _sound_ Scott had made as he’d roared at Alec across the library, just like—

Just like he had that night with the Beast.

“Hey, Nolan,” Liam tries, gently, starting to reach slowly forward again. “Your heart is going a mile a minute. Did he get you wor—?”

But Theo cuts him off as he snaps, “Stop, get away from him,” all the exhaustion gone from his suddenly-upright body as he grabs Liam’s wrist and yanks his hand away.

Liam stares him, clearly thrown. “Theo, what…?”

But Theo isn’t looking at Liam, he’s looking at _Nolan_ , his expression gone sharp as he studies Nolan’s face and his heaving shoulders and the way that he’d unconsciously brought his wounded hand up to cradle it against his chest. Nolan doesn’t know what to say, can’t _think_ of anything to say, not with the spiked ball of fear still sitting hard up beneath his throat, strangling him. Theo searches his eyes a little longer and then his expression softens and he touches his tongue to his bottom lip, looks away as his posture sags out of its sudden-alertness, exhaustion creeping back in.

“Just—give him some space,” Theo orders Liam quietly, and then pushes himself painfully to his feet, clearly pretending not to notice when Nolan reflexively stumbles back a few steps.

Liam opens his mouth to respond but Scott beats him to it as he stands, too, and announces, “We need to get Alec out of here, he isn’t going to be any better when he wakes up.”

“The Hale House?” Malia offers, looking up at Scott from her place still on the ground. “The Preserve will be deserted, and between all of us, we can keep him corralled.”

“Yeah,” Scott agrees tiredly, after a few seconds of thinking it over. He lifts one shoulder and scrubs his face with the side of his arm, then drops it and says, more strongly, “Yeah, that’s a good idea. Theo, your truck…?”

“You’re going to throw Alec in the back like a sack of potatoes, aren’t you?” Liam observes dryly, and then bites back a yelp when Theo kicks him not-so-gently in the side of the ribs. “Ow, asshole!”

“I’ll drive,” Theo tells Scott, and then he tips his head to glare back down at Liam as he adds, “Liam can ride with you and Malia in the truck bed, in case Alec wakes up on the way.”

Liam sneers at him in response and attempts to punch him in the thigh, Theo dodging out of the way with a sharply-hissed _Liam_. The situation probably would have continued to devolve, except that Corey suddenly clears his throat quietly and everyone stops to look over at him, Liam frozen mid-lunge at one of Theo’s legs.

“Maybe I should go with you guys, too,” He says, and Nolan expects him to be looking at Scott as he says it, but he’s looking at _Nolan_ , expression unsure. After a beat Corey swallows, and then he _does_ look at Scott as he explains, “It’s late, but it’s not _that_ late. There will be other people on the roads. I can—I can hide you.”

Scott studies him for a long second. Strictly speaking Corey is _right_ , but it’s apparently obvious to Scott—like it had been to Theo, and apparently to Corey, too—that something else is going on. After a beat Scott’s eyes flick over to Nolan, who has to resist the urge to shrink back, some, and then he returns his attention to Corey and nods with a small, grateful—and genuine—smile.

“Good thinking, Corey. That’d be great,” Scott answers, and then he _does_ turn fully back to Nolan, the smile on his face taking on a strained edge, “You should have my mom look at your hand. She’s working the seven-to-seven shift at the hospital.”

“I’ll take him,” Mason jumps in before Nolan can say _no, it’s okay, I’m okay_.

Scott starts to say _thank you_ , but Malia interrupts him before he can finish, “Scott, we’ve gotta go. I can hear Alec’s heartbeat starting to speed up, he’s going to be awake soon.”

Scott grimaces but he also immediately moves to lean down over Alec, straightens up with Alec’s unconscious weight draped over his shoulders. Nolan stares at the boneless hang off Alec’s arm across Scott’s back, so very close to _lifeless_ hanging, and has to swallow several times against a surge of bile in his throat, look away. But he looks back up almost instantly, Liam’s and Theo’s squabble forgotten as they jog after Scott and Malia heading for the doors, Corey stopping only to kiss Mason quickly before following them, too.

It leaves Nolan and Mason alone in the sudden cavernous silence of the library after the doors swing shut behind him, no sign of the previous chaotic confrontation besides the thin streaks of Liam’s blood across one small section of floor and a handful of fallen books from the shelf Alec had thrown Theo into. Mason stands next to him grimacing for a moment, and then he sucks in a huge breath of air, lets it stream back out of him in an exhausted gust.

“C’mon,” He finally says, and tilts his head towards the doors. “Let’s get you to Melissa.”

Nolan clutches his wounded hand a little closer to his chest and thinks about arguing, but with his steadily-fading adrenaline the scratches are starting to throb, and so he closes his eyes, briefly, and then looks back up at Mason and says, “Okay.”

\---

Ms. McCall sees them coming through the hospital doors from her place at the nurse’s station and waves them immediately into a nearby exam room, her expression already taking on a certain resignation.

“Well, you’re both on your feet and I haven’t heard my son—or anyone else for that matter—howl, so I’m cautiously optimistic that you’re not here with another world-ending catastrophe,” She observes wryly, closing and locking the door behind them.

“Not world-ending, no,” Mason agrees, but his attempt at humor falls somewhat flat as he glances there-and-away at Nolan, who has his wounded hand hidden away in his sweatshirt pocket. “There was an…accident, earlier, at the—”

“It wasn’t his fault,” Nolan finds himself cutting in, louder and more defensively than he’d intended; both Mason and Ms. McCall jump.

“What wasn’t whose fault?” Ms. McCall demands sharply. “And who, specifically, are we talking about here? Scott?”

“Alec,” Mason hurries to clarify, darting another quick look at Nolan, his brow furrowing. “He, um…”

“ _We_ forgot it was the full moon,” Nolan interrupts him again, more than a little defiantly as he meets Ms. McCall’s gaze. But he falters almost instantly, his eyes jumping around the room as he repeats, more quietly than before, “It wasn’t his fault.”

“Okay,” Ms. McCall agrees. “It wasn’t his fault.” Nolan recognizes the tone, a _patient-soothing_ tone, and feels his teeth grit. But Ms. McCall just continues, “But you still haven’t told me _what_ wasn’t his fault.”

Mason looks at Nolan expectantly but suddenly the _last_ thing, the absolute _last thing_ Nolan wants to do is take his hand out of his pocket. But that doesn’t make any _sense_ —it’s why they’re _here_ , after all, and from the increasing burn emanating out from the claw marks, _someone_ really needs to look at them—and so Nolan swallows, heavily, and then reluctantly pulls his wounded-and-still-bloody hand out, holds it out towards Ms. McCall.

Ms. McCall hisses a breath out through her teeth as she takes hold of either side of Nolan’s palm, tilting it this way and that under the light. Nolan wants to say _it looks worse than it is_ , but he doesn’t actually know if that’s true. It certainly _looks_ bad enough, blood tried tacky across the back of his hand and down between his knuckles, and it _feels_ pretty bad, too; Nolan had started carefully holding his fingers straight after the first time he’d tried to bend them and had nearly bitten through his tongue at the sharp stab of pain.

But it turns out he’d been right, after all: when Ms. McCall finishes wiping away the dried blood with a damp cloth, she reveals four neat, nearly parallel scratches. Humming to herself and setting the cloth down next to Nolan’s hip atop the exam table she’d made him take a seat on, Ms. McCall leans a little closer down towards the marks and purses her lips, looking thoughtful.

“All things considered, these aren’t too bad,” Ms. McCall finally announces, straightening back up and smiling at Nolan and then at Mason, sat in one of the room’s chairs. “But I’d still like to err on the side of caution, give you a few stitch—”

“No,” Nolan protests, immediately and once again over-loud. Ms. McCall cuts off and stares at him, taken aback, but Nolan just shakes his head, tells her, “No stitches,” because he can perfectly imagine the look on Alec’s face if he came out of his full-moon fugue and saw that he’d forced _stitches_ into the back of Nolan’s hand.

“Nolan…” Ms. McCall starts, eyes soft, but Nolan just shakes his head again, meets her eyes.

“ _Please_ ,” He pleads. “If you were only going to give them to me to—to err on the side of caution, then I don’t _really_ need them, right?”

Ms. McCall trades a concerned look with Mason, which Nolan forces himself to pretend not to see. Instead he just holds her eyes when she turns back to him, the inside of his bottom lip between his teeth as he struggles not to look away under the attention.

“...okay,” Ms. McCall finally concedes, and Nolan drops his head and lets out a relieved sigh, though it freezes right back up when Ms. McCall ducks her head so that she can once more catch his eyes as she clarifies, “Okay, _for now_. But you _will_ come see me tomorrow, and if I am in any way dissatisfied with how they look, you _will_ let me give you stitches.”

“Deal,” Nolan agrees immediately, and gives her a shaky smile when she frowns at him.

But after a few seconds she just sighs and leans backwards for a cabinet full of supplies. “You’re not off the hook yet, kid—I’ve still got to clean them.”

Mason drops him off at home an hour later, and only leaves after Nolan insists, repeatedly, that he’s _fine_. Closing the front door behind himself, Nolan takes a few seconds to lean against it and just _breathe_ , and then he straightens up and heads for his room, says a quick _hello, goodnight_ to his parents as he passes them, making sure to keep his now-bandaged hand hidden once more in his sweatshirt pocket as he does. Once inside with the door shut, Nolan drops heavily down onto his bed and—after a moment of hesitation—pulls out his phone.

The screen doesn’t show any new messages, not that Nolan was expecting any; he’d just been with Mason, and practically everyone else from the pack would still be at the Hale House “corralling” Alec. Breath stuttering as that thought immediately dredges up the memory of Alec’s savage expression as he’d raised his clawed hand, no recognition at _all_ in his eyes as he’d stared at Nolan held fast before him, Nolan throws his phone to the side and covers his face with his hands, curls forward over his legs. _It wasn’t his fault_ , Nolan reminds himself forcefully, teeth gritting. _It was the full moon._ It doesn’t help, really, just sends _guilt_ threading through the fear still anchored insidiously out through Nolan’s limbs, his veins, and Nolan squeezes his eyes shut in frustration, bites back a harsh sound.

After a while—long enough that he hears his parents’ footsteps come creaking up the stairs on their way to bed—he finally manages to straighten up, push himself to his feet so he can start getting ready for bed. He ignores his phone still laying haphazardly on the bedspread the whole time he’s doing it, but the second he gets back from the bathroom and climbs under the covers his eyes are drawn to it, and he crunches upward, snags it before falling back down flat.

There are still no new messages, but Nolan ignores that, just thumbs open the lock screen and navigates to the pack’s group text. Theo’s and Liam’s _ETA ten minutes_ is still sitting underneath Scott’s _everyone meet at the animal clinic, Deaton thinks he has something_ , and Nolan hesitates a few seconds before starting to type. Then he stops, looks at his question half-written— _is Alec_ —and bites his lip.

Erasing what he’d written and backing out of the group text, Nolan scrolls through his list of messages until he finds Scott’s name and taps into that instead. _Is Alec ok?_ , he re-types quickly, and sends it before the barbed feeling in the back of his throat can solidify into—something else. Then he deliberately puts his phone face-down on his nightstand and turns his back to it, huddles under the covers and desperately prays for unconsciousness.

He sleeps badly, and gasps himself awake throughout the night from too-real nightmares, made all the worse for how each of them is based in _memory_. First it’s Alec, back in the library but with his eyes a glowing, ghostly blue under the fluorescent lights; the Beast’s eyes. Then, it’s Liam at the zoo, Nolan back up against that wall with Liam fang-mouthed and very nearly out of control with rage, except this time instead of stopping Liam from killing him, Theo flashes golden eyes and sharp teeth and smirks savagely at Liam as he asks _what are you waiting for_?

And then, the last time: Nolan dreams he’s back in the library with dozens of other huddled, terrified students as they watch Scott and the Beast fight, only this time, _this time_ , Scott and the Beast stop fighting with each other, and turn to stare up at Nolan and the other kids instead, and Scott _grins_.

Nolan comes jerking awake from that one with his hair sweat-matted to his forehead, his sheets a twisted mess around his legs and arms, and his heart feeling like it’s about to rabbit out of his chest. Sucking down huge, somehow still too-shallow gasps of air, Nolan looks sideways to the clock on his nightstand and sees _4:48_ glowing red back at him. Recoiling away from the remembered burn of Scott’s equally red eyes, Nolan struggles loose of his sheets and stumbles for his bathroom door.

Showering helps—after he’s all but torn the sweat-stained bandages off from around his wounded hand in his hazy, still half-panicked desperation—and Nolan stays under the water long enough to wash away not only the stink of his own fear-sweat, but the remnants— _not real_ , he reminds himself, over and over again, _they weren’t real_ —of his nightmares. He keeps his wounded hand on the tile and the other covering the scar on his neck, fingers tracing the same path that Alec’s lips had, earlier that night; that Rossler’s knife had, the night that Theo and Parrish and the rest of the pack had saved his life.

When he gets back out the clock says _5:26_ , the glowing red of the numbers once more innocuous. Shoulders slumping on a heavy exhale, Nolan finishes drying off and pulls on the first pair of jeans and shirt he finds before dropping once more onto the bed. His phone is still sitting where he left it, and after a second—lip between his teeth—Nolan reaches forward and picks it up, turns it face-up. The screen lights up instantly, and sitting atop a picture of him and Alec both grinning wide at the camera is a message from Scott; blinking in surprise, Nolan taps the message and waits while his phone pulls it up.

 _Alec is fine_ , Scott’s message says, _He’s already started coming out of it—moon is setting_.

 _Good_ , Nolan sends back, before he can overthink it. _Thanks for letting me know_.

He puts his phone down immediately after, then jerks hard enough to nearly flail off the bed when it starts vibrating furiously against his nightstand. Hissing out a sound and grimacing in the direction of his parents’ bedroom, Nolan picks it up quickly and looks at it, frowns at the incoming video-call request.

“Scott?” Nolan whispers, once he’s slid his thumb across the screen to answer it.

Scott looks—terrible, if Nolan is going to be honest about it, grime-streaked and with his shirt ripped and exhaustion writ plain across his face. But he still manages a small smile when he realizes the call has connected, even as he brings a hand up to rub tired fingers under one tired eye.

“Hey, Nolan,” Scott rasps. “Sorry for calling so early, but with your text, I figured you were awake.”

“...okay,” Nolan says, finally, after a few blank seconds of staring at Scott, unsure what else he’s supposed to say.

Scott seems to catch his confusion because he grimaces, “God, sorry. Weird night.” He offers Nolan a wobbly grin, which Nolan does his best to return, then continues, “We’re still at the Hale House and will be for the next few hours, just to be on the safe side, but I wanted to see if _you_ were okay.”

 _He means the claw marks_ , Nolan realizes instantly, and he quickly blurts out, “I’m fine. Your mom thought—thought they weren’t that bad. No stitches or anything.” Even as he says it he’s aware that he’s stretching the truth a bit, and doing it in a high, strained voice. Swallowing, he gives silent thanks that at least Scott isn’t in the room to hear his pulse jump.

Scott’s eyebrows still rise as he stares at Nolan through the screen. “Oh—kay,” He finally agrees slowly. “I’m glad to hear it.” Then he stops, looks briefly away as he blows out a harsh gust of air before turning back. “Look, Nolan. I’m really sorry about last night. None of us were think—”

“It wasn’t his fault,” Nolan cuts in, hearing the edge of hysteria in his own voice as he says it and wondering if it’d been there when he’d told the same thing to Ms. McCall last night; from the remembered look on her face, it almost definitely had. “It was the full moon, right? It—it wasn’t his fault.”

Scott doesn’t argue, but he also doesn’t agree. Instead he studies Nolan for a long stretch of seconds and then says, “The moon will finish setting in a few hours, and Alec should be fully back to himself then. I get the feeling he’s going to want to see you, but tell me if—”

“It _wasn’t his fault_ ,” Nolan insists, and now it’s not just an _edge_ of hysteria in his voice, but Nolan forces himself past that and Scott’s taken aback expression. “Don’t—don’t blame him for something—”

“I’m not blaming him,” Scott hurries to correct, tone gentle. “Nolan, I’m _not_ ,” He insists, when he sees whatever skeptical expression must be on Nolan’s face. “As much as I hate to say it, mistakes like this come with the territory. But sometimes—hey, Nolan, _listen_ to me,” Scott interrupts himself to say, forcing Nolan to look back up at him from where he’d turned away from the screen. “So many of us are supernatural, sometimes we forget what it’s like for those of us who aren’t.”

He holds Nolan’s eyes once he’s done, and even through the video-call his force of presence is palpable; Nolan swallows, and nods slowly after a few stretched seconds.

“You’re right,” Nolan mumbles miserably. “Sorry.”

Scott just smiles softly at him, and then he looks off to the side, expression going alert as he apparently listens to something someone is saying to him. Finally he gives a brisk, acknowledging nod and turns back to the screen.

“I’ve got to go, and while at this point I’m assuming the answer is yes—” He pauses to give Nolan a wry smile, “—I need to make sure. If Alec wants to see you later, you’re okay with that?”

“Yes,” Nolan says, immediately and without hesitation. “Yes, of course.”

But as sure as he’d sounded when he’d given Scott those _yeses_ , he finds himself getting less and less sure as the day drags on.

It starts when he pulls into the parking lot at school and sees the library sitting innocuous in front of him, students spilling in and out of it no particular order. Mason had texted Parrish and the Sheriff last night to both inform them of the accident—a promise newly-made to the Sheriff to keep him fully in-the-loop, and which Scott had genuinely been trying to keep—and to ask for their help in cleaning up the library, and Parrish had promised to take care of it. So Nolan knows, intellectually, that there’s nothing to worry about, but he still feels a flutter of uneasiness go through him as he stares at the doors though his windshield.

That flutter solidifies into a knot in the bottom of his stomach when he finally forces himself out of his car and into the school’s main building, and almost immediately sees Liam slumped three-quarters asleep against the lockers next to Mason’s, his eyes closed and his whole body drooping. There’s no sign of the claw marks that Alec had carved into his stomach less than twelve hours ago, of course, and besides looking like he might fall over from exhaustion at any moment he’s clearly fine. But Nolan’s steps still falter on his way to meet up with him and Mason and Corey, his mind filling with the exact pattern that Liam’s blood had created as it had splattered across the library floor.

Liam opens his eyes when Nolan gets close enough, then almost immediately squints them as he catches sight of Nolan, his nostrils flaring. Uncomfortable under the scrutiny, Nolan looks at and then away from him, says a rote, “Yeah, I’m fine,” and holds up his somewhat-sloppily bandaged hand as evidence when Corey asks how he’s doing; all awkward, quiet sympathy.

But it isn’t until fourth period, right before lunch, that the knot of uncertainly transmutes like the worst kind of alchemy into a fucking _rock_ stuck right in the middle of his throat, because that’s when Liam suddenly straightens up out of his disinterested slouch at their shared lab table to look out the windows at where Theo’s hulking truck has just pulled into the parking lot. Liam grins, wide and unrestrained, his exhaustion seemingly evaporating as he stares out at Theo and Alec hopping out of the truck’s cab.

Nolan, though.

Nolan feels _fear_ lance through him, immediately and sharp and leaving the muscles surrounding his spine somehow feeling simultaneously too tight and yet loose and shaky, like they might not hold his weight when he’s going to have to get up, in a few minutes, to follow Liam out to the truck. Swallowing, Nolan presses his hands _hard_ against the surface of the lab table, trying to order them to _stop trembling_ ; it doesn’t help that doing so throws the white bandage around his wounded hand into sharp relief. Liam turns back to him and stares, his eyes flicking from Nolan’s face to his white-knuckled hands and then dragging back up, and Nolan jerks his head away before Liam can catch his eyes, feigns sudden interest in Mr. Jeremy’s class debrief.

Liam continues hovering awkwardly around him as they pack up, exchanging entirely too-obvious looks with Corey and Mason and seeming just completely at a loss. But he doesn’t try to touch Nolan, like he usually would—no friendly pat on the shoulder or grip on the arm or teasing headlock thrown around Nolan’s neck—and Nolan thinks of the frozen look on his face last night after Liam had tried to reach out, and the burn in his throat gets _worse_.

But Nolan doesn’t know what else to do, so he just ignores the whole tangled mess of it, and trails Mason and Corey and Liam out towards the parking lot, his backpack slung over one shoulder and his bandaged hand tucked as deep in his jacket pocket as he can get it. In an undoubtedly calculated move, Theo hangs back by his truck as Alec catches sight of Nolan and the others and starts hurrying forward. Nolan finds his steps slowing until he comes to an uncertain stop maybe twenty feet away from Theo’s truck, Mason and Corey and Liam all continuing on towards Theo and passing Alec coming the other way as they do.

“Dude! I thought you were bringing us lunch!” Nolan hears Liam squawk, complaining, as they get closer and he apparently sees Theo’s lack of proffered foodstuffs.

“I’m not your personal UberEats,” Nolan hears Theo counter irritatedly, and then hears, in quick succession, Liam make an aggrieved sound and Mason offer to go get food instead; from his tone, Nolan can perfectly picture his longsuffering eye-roll to Corey.

But his attention is immediately and jarringly dragged back to Alec as Alec finishes closing the distance between them. For a brief, involuntary moment Nolan wonders what he’ll do if Alec tries to touch him, but it winds up not mattering in the worst way; Alec stops a good four feet away from him, looking simultaneously tormented by and terrified of the distance, like it’s both killing him to be so far away and yet he’s terrified it might not be far _enough_. Some of the fear and panic in Nolan’s chest evaporates, replaced with a dull, pained ache as he watches Alec shift from foot to foot, eyes downcast.

“Alec—” He starts.

But Alec unintentionally interrupts him, blurting out, “Nolan, I’m so sorry,” all in a furious rush.

He addresses it to Nolan’s shoes but looks up when he’s done, his expression already half a wince and his shoulders hunched in. Nolan stares at him open-mouthed for a few seconds, and then _he_ has to look away.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Nolan mutters, and has to wonder if repetition is starting to cause his steadfast certainty in that truth to fade; the back of his wounded hand throbs.

Alec makes a pained noise and Nolan’s head jerks up, stares as Alec buries his fingers in his hair as he mumbles, “I shouldn’t have gone with everyone last night, I should have been keeping better track of the moon. I don’t know _what_ I was… I just _thought_ …” He mutters, almost to himself, his distress so all-encompassing and obvious that Nolan has taken a step forward and put a hand on Alec’s chest before he’s fully thought about it.

“Alec, it _wasn’t your fault_ ,” Nolan repeats, more firmly this time, and manages to hold Alec’s eyes when Alec looks up at him.

But he realizes his mistake the next instant, because Alec’s eyes flicker right back down to Nolan’s hand on his chest. Nolan’s _wounded_ hand, wrapped in sloppy-and-frayed white bandages, Nolan’s rewrap after his shower this morning infinitely messier than Ms. McCall’s neat job at the hospital. A spike of—of _something_ bolts through Nolan, and it’s only with monumental and conscious effort that he keeps his hand where it is; keeps from jerking back and away from Alec staring at him like he knows _exactly_ what Nolan is thinking.

“I nearly killed you last night,” Alec counters, so quietly that Nolan almost can’t hear him over the background chaos of the high school now fully in the throes of lunch. “If Theo and Liam hadn’t been so close… If they hadn’t been so _fast_ …”

And this time Nolan _does_ have to take his hand away, cross his arms protectively over his chest, because Alec’s quiet confession strikes a little too close to the litany of _what-ifs_ that Nolan has been trying and failing not to think about: what if Theo and Liam had been across the room instead of so close by, what if they hadn’t realized whatever they’d realized as quickly as they had and intervened.

What if Alec’s strike had landed, and had torn Nolan open.

“That wasn’t… _You_ didn’t…” Nolan tries, and then finally stutters out, insistently but sounding all the weaker for it as each successive _what if_ twists the core of—of _whatever_ in his chest and throat tighter and higher and more painful, “It was the _moon_.”

“Nolan, I’m not sure that that—” Alec starts to argue.

And Nolan doesn’t want to hear it, _can’t_ hear it, because there’s a small, terrified corner of himself that’s absolutely sure that if he _does_ —if Alec says, _I’m not sure that that changes anything_ , or _I’m not sure that that matters_ —then it’s going to become the _truth_ , heavy and immovable and immutable. So Nolan launches himself forward and presses his mouth to Alec’s before he can finish, both his hands—bandaged and not—gripping either side of Alec’s face, hard and _too_ hard from the way Nolan can feel his fingertips aching.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Nolan whispers against his lips. “It _wasn’t your fault_ ,” He repeats, as forcefully as he can, but his heart is pounding inside his chest and his throat feels tight enough to choke him, because this close he can smell and taste and _feel_ Alec, and that closeness is dredging up the helpless, too-sharp memories of Alec’s golden eyes and fanged mouth and the way he’d held Nolan in place for his clawed hand, and eventually he has to push himself stumbling away, stay rooted there panting as Alec stares at him, stunned.

Twenty feet away and Liam and Theo—Mason and Corey having disappeared at some point to go get food, Nolan supposes—are also staring, Theo’s expression gone sharp and his body clearly taut as he watches them. And last night they’d both protected him—last night they’d both _saved his life_ —but all Nolan can see is Liam at the zoo, clawed hand uncurling, and all Nolan can remember is Theo at the hospital, fanged-mouth and furious and exuding _threat_ from every pore.

“I have to—I have to go,” Nolan stutters out, his eyes flicking wildly back to Alec’s, who hasn’t moved, and in fact looks like he hasn’t so much as _breathed_ since Nolan had shoved away from him. “I forgot—I forgot I’ve got a—a paper, to finish. For Coach. For last period.”

“Nolan—” Alec tries, shock still scrubbing his tone clean but with something heavier starting to weigh it down.

“But I’ll see you tonight, after practice. Right?” Nolan interrupts desperately, and only manages to hold Alec’s gaze for a second before he has to jerk his head away, look anywhere else.

But Alec just shakes his head, disagrees softly, “The full moon’s not totally over yet, Scott doesn’t want to take any chances. I’ve got to be back at the Hale House early.”

“Tomorrow, then,” Nolan improvises wildly. “Come back tomorrow for lunch.”

“Nolan…” Alec murmurs again, Nolan’s eyes flickering back-and-away to his, and whatever he sees on Nolan’s face must stop him, because he swallows back whatever he was going to say originally and just says, “Yes, okay. Lunch. Tomorrow,” instead.

“Okay,” Nolan agrees, too high and shaky but there isn’t anything he can do about it. He stays frozen where he is for a few seconds, his eyes darting from Alec still staring at him to Liam and Theo still watching eagle-eyed from Theo’s truck, and then he gives a jerky, _idiotic_ nod and turns on his heel; he flees.

Originally he heads for the main building, but that doesn’t make any _sense_ , he’d told Alec he had a _paper_ to finish, and so he gulps down an unsteady mouthful of air and shoves aside the absolute _wave_ of panic that crashes over him, and pivots so that he can hurry towards the library instead. The panic grows worse the closer and closer he gets, but Nolan grits his teeth and forces himself forward until he’s just about ready to slam through the doors.

He falters, though, when his eyes flick helplessly to the large, sheet-glass windows on either side of the doors, because he can see Alec still standing exactly where Nolan had left him, and even in the blurred reflection, Nolan can see the helpless pain writ raw over his expression.

Squeezing his eyes briefly shut, Nolan rips his gaze away and yanks open the library doors, and then lets them slam closed between him and Alec with a muted, too-final-seeming _bang_.

\---

Nolan wakes up the next morning more exhausted than when he went to sleep, sick to his stomach from half-remembered fragments of his nightmares, and _knows_ —instantly and irrevocably—that he can’t see Alec today.

For a long stretch of minutes he just lays sprawled out in his bed, still tangled in his sheets and with his wounded hand cupped over the scar on his neck, and considers. He could claim to be sick. He probably _looks_ sick, based on how he’s feeling, so his parents would probably buy it. But the pack wouldn’t; given the circumstances—given the claw marks still carved neatly into the back of his hand—they’d send someone over to check on him, because this is Beacon Hills, and even minor wounds could transmute violently and without warning into the next catastrophe. They wouldn’t want to take the chance, and then they’d _know_ —with no way for them or Nolan or anyone else to pretend that they didn’t—that Nolan had lied.

And they’d know why.

So Nolan gives up on that whole snarled train of thought and fights his way free of his sheets, forces himself up and out of bed to start getting ready. He leaves it alone through his arrival at the school and Mason’s, Corey’s, and—and _Liam’s_ stilted, unsure greeting. He lets it lie through first period, and second, and then halfway through Ms. Djordjevic’s slow stroll through the classroom as she both expounds upon the nuanced themes of last night’s reading _and_ searches the room for signs of scholarly contraband like a suspicious jail warden, Nolan ignores Mason’s frantically gesturing hands and reacts too slowly to put his phone away as she turns down his row.

“Thank you, Mr. Holloway, for providing us such a poignant example of the fleeting nature of humankind’s ability to hold onto material things,” Ms. Djordjevic tells him—and the rest of the class—dryly as she plucks his phone from his hands. She walks towards the front of the class to set his phone on her desk as she continues, “As much as I appreciate it, you know the drill—you can get your phone back after class, and I’ll see you for lunchtime detention.”

Nolan sinks down in his chair, cheeks flushing as around him everyone sniggers and grins—not _totally_ unkindly—and Mason gives him a sympathetic grimace. Wincing, Nolan returns it as best he can, but drags his gaze back forward in the next instant, because his heart is pounding _hard_ in his throat. He tells himself it’s embarrassment, tries desperately to _believe_ it’s embarrassment, but there’s a hot trickle of relief down the back of his spine, and he’s—not that good of a liar. At least not inside his own _head_.

He drags his feet up to Ms. Djordjevic’s desk at the end of class and sheepishly accepts his phone back, returns her cheerful _see you in an hour_ with much less enthusiasm. The group text had blown up during the interim, apparently, Liam crowing something about _constant vigilance!_ and commentating on Nolan’s apparent lack of situational awareness. There’d been a flurry of _???_ and _what the hell’s_ before Mason had—with eye-roll perfectly implied—clarified that Nolan had gotten caught with his phone and, consequently, had received lunchtime detention.

 _Sorry_ , Nolan texts Alec separately as he trails Mason, Corey, and Liam down the hallway towards their biology classroom.

There’s a brief delay and then the little gray typing dots pop up, and after awhile—after too long, really, Nolan already sat at his table, his phone hidden underneath it—Alec finally sends, _It’s okay._ Then, _Happens to the best of us, right?_

Shame slides slickly down Nolan’s throat to replace his relief, because even without seeing Alec’s face, he can tell how forced his attempted joviality is. Suddenly desperate to make up for it, Nolan darts a covert glance at Mr. Jeremy turning to the blackboard for the start of the day’s lesson and then returns his attention to his phone.

 _The full moon is over, right?_ He types out quickly, then adds before Alec can reply, _Come over tonight after practice_.

He has to hurriedly hide his phone and jerk his attention back upwards when Mr. Jeremy turns to ask a question of the class, his expression going resigned as he stares out at the sea of blank faces before him. Eventually he sighs and answers his own question, pivoting back towards the board and giving Nolan the opportunity to pull his phone back out, check for Alec’s answer.

He doesn’t see any new texts but what he _does_ see are the there-and-gone blips of the _dot-dot-dot_ typing symbol next to Alec’s name as he apparently types and then deletes, types and then deletes a response. Nolan feels the bottom drop out of his stomach as he watches, his earlier shame hardening into guilt as the seconds drag.

And then he really _does_ have to put his phone away, because Mr. Jeremy starts passing out their lab packets. He and Corey trade baffled looks when they glance over the first page of instructions, and then almost simultaneously turn around to stare at Mason, who’d already started beavering away and chattering happily to an equally-bewildered looking Liam. Mason looks up after a second and glances between all of them, expression going a little hunted.

“Did you guys, uh. Want to work together?” He asks tentatively.

Between one thing and another Nolan doesn’t get the chance to check his phone again until after class has wrapped up, Mason taking charge of the lab with Liam, Corey, and Nolan primarily relegated to handing him various bits of equipment as he asks for them. He pulls out his phone while he’s buying a quick lunch at the cafeteria, and reads Alec’s message as he weaves through his fellow students on his way back to Ms. Djordjevic’s classroom.

 _You sure?_ It simply reads, and Nolan nearly fumbles the paper-wrapped sandwich and apple in his arms as he hurries to respond.

 _YES_ , Nolan answers, then grimaces at his own use of caps-lock and adds, _Yes, I’m sure._ Then, _:)_ , as if the addition of the emoji might somehow alleviate the total awkwardness of the exchange, instead of adding to it.

He’s going to have to surrender his phone the second he walks inside Ms. Djordjevic’s room, so Nolan lingers a few feet from the door, waiting for Alec’s response. It comes after only a few seconds, and Nolan feels some of the tightness in his chest unwind as his phone vibrates in his hand.

 _Okay_ , Alec’s reply reads, _See you tonight. Like 8? Theo’s making chili, I think. I’ll steal some_.

 _Yeah. Good. See you tonight_ , Nolan answers, and then heads inside and hands over his phone, takes his lunch to one of the desks in the back of the classroom and slouches into the seat. He eats quickly, barely tasting it and half-listening to Ms. Djordjevic as she hums absently to herself while grading papers, and then he wraps his apple core in the paper from his sandwich and pushes the package to the side of his desk before folding his arms over the surface and dropping his chin down onto them. His eyelids start getting heavier and heavier as he stares blankly out of the classroom’s windows, and eventually he gives up and lets them slide shut, his head tipping sideways.

He jolts awake what turns out to be fifteen minutes later, but he can barely focus on the clock at the front of the room, still too caught up in the lingering dregs of his nightmare. _Take care of it_ , Monroe had ordered him and Gabe, and so they had, Nolan trying not to throw up the whole time they’d been hiding Edgar’s body. And then Nolan had gone and sat in a classroom just like one, and had stared out at the rows of kids with bloody bandages wrapped around their hands; bandages not so different from the one wrapped around Nolan’s, now. Bandages that Nolan had been more than a little responsible for forcing onto around their hands.

 _Fuck_ , Nolan thinks to himself, and curls inward over his own crossed arms, dropping his bandaged hand down into his lap to hide it from both the rest of the empty room and _himself_ as he squeezes his eyes shut and tries to fight through the sudden roil of sickness his feels.

He tries the rest of the day to recapture that bloom of warmth he’d felt when Alec had agreed to come over, but he can’t seem to unbury it from the crushing weight of his resurged exhaustion and the low-grade nausea that had settled into his gut after his nightmare. Stumbling through the rest of his day on autopilot, Nolan somehow makes it into the locker room to change into his equipment and then out onto the field for practice, only for the whole effort to turn into a complete disaster within minutes.

He misses every shot he takes and catches nothing but empty air when his teammates attempt to pass to him, but it isn’t until they move to positional drills that it comes to a head. Too tired to fight with Finstock, he moves thoughtlessly into place as a defender when Finstock throws up his hands and yells at him to get there, and looks hazily around as the whistle blows and the other players start to move, to rush around and past him. Nolan concentrates best he can, and it isn’t until a shape suddenly darts in front of him—too fast to be moving at purely human speed—and intercepts Anderson bearing down on him, that Nolan realizes how close he’d come to just getting absolutely _planted_ into the ground.

“Holloway!” Finstock screeches, after Liam has rolled to his feet with a grimace and offered the winded Anderson a hand up from the ground. “What the hell is _wrong_ with you? You’re supposed to be defending the goal, Dunbar isn’t supposed to be defending _you!_ ”

“S—sorry, Coach,” Nolan stutters, blinking at Liam at where Liam is staring at him and doing a piss-poor job of trying to keep his concern off his face.

“Take a seat,” Finstock finally orders, irritation thick in his voice. “You look like a stiff wind could blow you over.”

“Right,” Nolan agrees, grimacing, and heads for the benches. Liam follows him, tossing a covert glance at Finstock, jogging a little to get himself further out of Finstock’s eyeline as Finstock turns towards Anderson and starts yelling at him instead.

“Seriously, Nolan,” Liam hisses at him once they’ve reached the benches and Nolan has collapsed down onto them. “What’s going on with you? Anderson was about to fell you like a tree.”

Nolan winces and hunches further into himself. “I haven’t—I haven’t really been sleeping,” He mutters finally, and looks up in time to catch the flicker of cramped understanding cross Liam’s face.

“Oh,” Liam finally manages, lamely. He touches his tongue to his bottom lip and glances nervously around, then flinches and starts to ask, “I mean, is it… I’m guessing it’s—”

He doesn’t get a chance to finish whatever he was going to say: Finstock must suddenly realize that Liam is missing from the field because he shrieks, “ _Dunbar!_ ”

Liam jolts like someone just prodded him with one of Argent’s ridiculous stun batons. Nolan smiles shakily up at him and tells him, “Go. I’m okay.”

It’s clear Liam doesn’t believe him, but Finstock screeches his name again, and so Liam—after one last glance at him—grimaces, and goes. Nolan watches him disappear into the sea of other players and then heaves out a rough breath, his eyes closing as he brings his hands up to cover his face, sinking down further into the bench as he does.

And then, later, back in the locker room as he’s packing up and ignoring Liam’s and Corey’s concerned looks from a few lockers down, Nolan bites his lip, and pulls out his phone. Guilt rises fresh in his throat again as he rereads his text exchange with Alec, as he catches the hesitation and _hope_ he can sense behind Alec’s words, but every one of his limbs feels leaden and his thoughts feel syrupy, and slow.

 _Hey_ , He texts Alec, finally. _I think maybe I should call it an early night. Liam had to keep me from getting pile-driven into the ground in practice, and Coach benched me._ He hesitates, and then adds, _I doubt I’d be much fun :\_ , trying to inject some lightheartedness into the conversation and instead coming across as—obvious even to himself—desperate.

He continues ignoring Liam and Corey on the way out to the parking lot, more than aware of them trading looks behind his back and just—too tired to deal with it. His phone stays silent and unmoved all throughout him saying his stilted goodbyes and sliding into the driver’s seat of his car, and then—Nolan leaning back away from where he’d been about to insert his key—it lights up three times in relatively quick succession.

 _Okay_ , it says first, and then, _No problem_ , followed by _Get some rest, okay?_ Nolan swallows and has to slump against his steering wheel for a moment, the corners of his eyes burning with frustration as he squeezes them tightly shut. But eventually he has to straighten back up, because most of the other cars have left the parking lot and the only one he _hasn’t_ heard is Liam’s ancient, jet-engine-spinning-up SUV, so he starts his car quickly and pulls out before he can give Liam and Corey more fodder for their obvious unease.

He makes a quick run to the hospital so that Ms. McCall can check his hand and declare it acceptable, and then goes home to eat a quick, relatively subdued dinner with his parents, though he nearly chokes on a green bean when his mom looks over and asks, all innocent concern, “Everything okay with you and Alec? We haven’t seen him in a few days.”

“Everything’s fine,” Nolan hurries to tell her, pulling his sweatshirt sleeve a little more fully over his wounded hand to ensure the edges of Ms. McCall’s newly-reapplied bandage are still hidden. “He’s just been—busy,” Nolan concludes, somewhat lamely.

“Pack business,” His dad proclaims solemnly, and then cracks a grin and looks proud of himself when it drags a surprised laugh out of Nolan and causes his mother to shake her head lightly, clearly amused.

Alec’s three text messages are still sitting unanswered on his phone when Nolan heads upstairs to his room, after, and Nolan sits on his bed and pulls it out, fully intending to answer them when he sees two new messages instead. He hesitates for a moment and then carefully thumbs them open, and almost immediately has to bite back a pained sound and throw his phone to the side; has to turn and bury his hot, twisted expression in his mattress.

 _Whatever you need,_ the first message had read. And then, just underneath it: _I’m sorry_.

\---

Alec doesn’t try to reach out the next day; not until Nolan does.

He’d almost done it last night: he’d struggled onto his elbows and unburied his phone from where it’d slid when he threw it, and thumbed open the text to start typing _it wasn’t your fault_. But he’d stopped, halfway through, because it’d just sounded like—it’d just sounded like _excuse-making_ , for one or both of them, and he couldn’t—do that to Alec, not when Alec was so clearly trying to avoid making excuses for himself. To take responsibility, Alec disagreeing with Nolan’s desperate claim that it was the full moon’s fault to say: _I don’t think that that—_

So Nolan had left Alec’s texts unanswered, and slept badly _again_ , and then he’d gotten up, and had gotten ready, and had gone to school to do it all over again.

Liam doesn’t seem to know whether to pretend—badly—that nothing’s wrong, or to defer to Nolan’s obvious distress and make himself scarce, but it’s clear he’s had some kind of conversation—undoubtedly with Theo—about the situation. Nolan can perfectly picture it in his head, actually: Liam at Theo’s stealing his food and reenacting the story of his saving Nolan from a concussion, or at the very least a severe bruising at practice last night, bewildered by Nolan’s behavior and wondering about it around a mouthful of half-chewed chili. Alec would have been there, Nolan realizes with a jolt; he would have been on the couch with his head in his hands while Theo ordered Liam not to be an _idiot_ , and to use his _head_ —had Liam forgotten how Nolan had gotten involved in all this bullshit in the first place?

Back in the present, Nolan suddenly realizes that he’s been staring at Liam blankly for the past several seconds, and blinks himself out of it, grimacing. Liam blinks back at him, and then he—stealing a page from Nolan’s own book—suddenly remembers a forgotten paper he needs to print and disappears into the sea of students. It leaves Nolan standing awkwardly with Mason and Corey, the latter of whom also seems at a loss as to whether he should _also_ make some excuse and flee.

“What, did you guys have some kind of pack meeting about me?” Nolan says, trying to sound self-deprecatingly aware and just sounding bitter, instead.

Mason and Corey trade a look, and the bitterness in Nolan’s chest grows teeth and _bites_ , even as Mason turns back to him and gently offers, “Everyone is just—worried. We’re not trying to be—”

“I get it,” Nolan cuts him off, a little viciously; he slams his biology book into his locker and yanks his calculus book out instead. “I’ve got to go. I’ll see you guys in English.”

He absorbs absolutely nothing during his next two classes, the lectures blurring into incomprehensible background noise as Nolan puts his head down on his folded arms, his wounded hand—now bandage free, Ms. McCall having declared the claw marks healed enough—cupped over the scar on his neck. He pictures Alec at the animal clinic with Dr. Deaton, diligently following his instructions as they examine this family pet or that, swallowing down the urge to ask Deaton if there was some way to _do better_ , next full moon; to _better control himself_ , like he was some kind of rabid dog that a reluctant family didn’t want to put down.

 _It wasn’t your fault_ , Nolan tries telling his mental Alec, but the words ring as hollow as Nolan’s stupid, _stupid_ attempts to pretend that nothing was wrong, yesterday; as hollow as his constantly-broken promises to see Alec later.

“Señor Holloway?” Someone suddenly asks, and Nolan’s head jerks up and he looks at Mrs. Perez, then glances around, stupefied, as he realizes that the rest of the classroom is empty. Mrs. Perez studies him for a moment and then seems to take pity on him and switches to English as she asks him, “Is everything okay?”

“Fine,” Nolan responds, immediate and rote. Then, more waveringly, “Lo siento, Señora Perez.” He realizes instantly he’s going to have to switch back to English to finish making his excuses and blushes, ducks his head as he mutters, “I just, um. Just stayed up too late last night. Won’t—won’t happen again.”

Mrs. Perez doesn’t believe him anymore than anyone from the pack has believed anything he’s said for the last three days, but she just frowns softly and lets him go, Nolan gathering up his stuff in a rush and hurrying out of the room before she can change her mind. He thinks about going to English and having to sit under the weight of Mason’s, Corey’s, and Liam’s well-meaning stares, and can’t do it; he makes a sharp turn down one of the hallways, cutting through the crowds of other students and heading for one of the less-used athletics storage rooms instead. Even to his nose it smells like old plastic and cracking leather and sweaty teenagers, but that might actually work out in his favor; unless Mason or Corey or Liam call in Theo or Malia to come track him, they probably won’t be able to find him.

Of course they do _text_ him, almost immediately, because sudden unexplained disappearances in Beacon Hills are never a laughing matter: _Where the hell are you? Everything okay?_

It’s Liam, probably annoyed with himself for his awkward showing earlier and making up for it by being overly aggressively caring now. Mason and Corey are on the thread, too, but no one else is; a concession that they’re willing to keep the rest of the pack out of it, provided Nolan doesn’t put his foot in his mouth and tip them over into actively panicked. Finding a bare bit of wall to put his back against and slide down, Nolan considers his response for a few seconds and then types out: _I’m okay_ , then, _I swear_ , and finally—hating himself a little for it even as he types it— _Please don’t say anything to the others_.

He means Alec, and there’s no way Mason and Corey and Liam don’t all realize that. The text thread is silent for a few minutes as the three of them probably try to pantomime a full conversation to each other across the classroom without invoking Ms. Djordjevic’s wrath, and then finally Liam writes back: _Okay_ , followed quickly by, _But like, text messages on the hour, or we’re going to assume you’ve been kidnapped and send up the bat signal_.

 _I thought you were Clark Kent_ , Nolan nearly writes back, but stops himself, wincing; that now pack-wide, running inside joke never would have even _happened_ if Nolan hadn’t teamed up with Gabe to kick the shit out of Liam in class that one time. Curling in on himself, Nolan forces himself to type back _okay_ , and then puts his phone down on the floor next to him and clutches his hands over the back of his skull, his arms pressed tight against either side of his face.

He stays there through English, and then biology. He sends the requested texts because while Liam may have couched the order in humor, he wasn’t, in fact, joking. The ones he sends are nothing more than _still fine_ , and _okay_ , but they’re not the only words he _writes_ ; in the yawning blank of the message composition box he tries typing out whole explanations, these long and rambling exposés of how it’d felt to stare up at Alec in the library three nights ago, or Liam at the zoo six months ago, or—or the _Beast_ , standing nearly where Alec had been, Nolan staring in horror through the upstairs railings and unable to _breathe_ through the absolute certainty in his chest that he was going to die. Liam and the others don’t text anything back, but it occurs to Nolan, too late, that they must be seeing the endless little _dot-dot-dot_ of him typing, and he colors, deletes everything that’d he written, and stops.

But he can’t seem to find his earlier lethargy. Instead there’s this buzz under his skin, this specific, can’t-sit-still energy, his ass sore from sitting on the ground and his muscles cramped from being so tightly curled in on himself, and Nolan chews his bottom lip, tilts his phone so that the screen will activate again. Outside the room there’s the dull roar of students spilling out of classrooms for lunch, and on his screen there’s still the picture of Alec and him grinning wide at the camera. They’d been at the McCall’s for a pack dinner, Nolan remembers, and then they’d gone back to Alec’s, and Nolan had spent the next several hours coaxing Alec’s fangs out from behind his lips, his claws out from behind his so, so carefully gripping fingertips.

Nolan stares at the photo for a little longer, and then he scrambles to his feet.

The waiting room at the animal clinic is empty, but Nolan hears Deaton and Alec talking as he lets the door swing shut behind him. Deaton appears from the back room, clipboard in hand, as the bell over the door rings cheerfully. If he’s surprised to see Nolan, he doesn’t show it—unsurprisingly—just smiles his usual slight smile and folds his arms over the clipboard pressed to his chest, turns his head slightly over his shoulder as he calls Alec’s name.

“Someone is here to see you,” Deaton explains in response to Alec’s muffled, half-yelled _yeah?_ from somewhere in the back of the clinic.

“Oh, what—really?” Alec starts speaking before he’s fully entered the room, so he gets suddenly louder and more comprehensible when he suddenly pops through the doorway with his arms wrapped around a crinkling bag of dry dog food the size of his torso. “Is it Mrs. Tay—?”

He stops dead when he spots Nolan, the bag in his hands crackling loudly as his arms tighten around it. Nolan meets his wide eyes for a second and then has to look away, the completeness of Alec’s shock burning at him.

“Didn’t, ah. Didn’t sense me coming?” Nolan asks, tone an attempted tease that loses something to the way his voice wavers.

“No. I mean, yes. I mean—” Alec answers, and then corrects, and then corrects _again_ , all in quick succession. He cuts himself off and swallows, looks away and then back before he begins again, “I did. I _thought_ I did, but then I thought that it was just—”

He cuts himself off again, but Nolan doesn’t need him to continue; he knows Alec well enough at this point to know that the words he’d been about to say were _wishful thinking_. Dropping his own eyes and forcing himself to breathe past the painful twist to his chest, Nolan pulls his lips between his teeth and then sucks in a deep breath of air, and then he straightens back up, holds up the large paper bag in his hand.

“We, um. We didn’t get to do lunch, yesterday,” Nolan tells him, that cramped feeling in his chest twisting tighter, “So…”

Alec doesn’t seem to know what to do, the bag of dog food still clutched to his chest like a shield and his fingers still dug white-knuckled around its edges. They tighten further as he keeps staring at Nolan, but that seems to help, actually; the loud crackling seems to snap him out of whatever train of thought he’d been caught up in and he jumps, glances down at the bag like he’s never seen it before. He flexes his fingers again, apparently deliberately this time, and then he looks back up at Deaton, who’s already looking back at him.

“Go,” Deaton tells him, not unkindly. “Our next patient isn’t until later this afternoon.”

Alec gives him a flicker of a smile and nods, quickly. Only after does he really seem to remember the giant bag of dog food in his arms as something other than a convenient barrier between himself and Nolan, and the frown he aims down at it after is so very put-out and so very _Alec_ ; Nolan bites back a quiet laugh and feels some of the tension in the muscles between his shoulder blades unwind. As he watches Deaton smiles patiently and sets the clipboard he’d been holding down on a nearby desk before reaching out to take the bag of food from Alec.

“Thanks, thank you,” Alec breathes earnestly, all in a rush, and Nolan knows—just like Deaton must know—that Alec doesn’t just mean for the assistance.

“Of course,” Deaton replies. “Enjoy your lunch.” He starts heading back into the clinic’s back rooms with the bag, though he slows as he does to add over his shoulder, “It was nice seeing you, Mr. Holloway. It was good of you to stop by.”

The words are innocuous and probably sincerely meant, but in Nolan’s experience Deaton can’t—or chooses not to—so much as comment on the weather without sounding like he’s portending the arrival of some great omen. Nolan and Alec have laughed about it, before, Alec’s face gone comically serious and his voice dropped into a low, bass register, held only for a few seconds before he cracks himself up and returns to just being _Alec_ , grinning up at Nolan with his eyes crinkled up. Now, Deaton’s statement just causes Nolan’s shoulders to hunch a little with shame, his fingers tightening some around the bag of food he’d brought.

If Alec thinks Deaton is being his usual mysterious self he doesn’t give any indication, just rubs his now-empty palms against his scrub pants and says, “The park?,” in a voice that pitches higher than his usual register; Alec winces on the question mark.

Nolan gives a jerky nod. Alec gives an immediate, reflexive nod back, and then seems to realize what he’s doing and stops himself, colors. There isn’t anything about this situation that isn’t supremely awkward and just a little bit tragic, all this self-inflicted guilt clawing at Nolan’s throat, but it’s also—hard, looking at Alec like this—his disastrously messy hair and his wrinkled scrub pants and his faded gray shirt whose hem he’s obviously been tugging at, a nervous habit he’s never been able to break—to remember him as he’d been in the library. It’s not that Nolan doesn’t _know_ that the two versions of Alec are the same person, but it’s easier to believe that it was what it was—an _accident_ —with Alec standing shy in front of him, clearly wishing he had his bag-of-dog-food-as-shield back and alternating between staring at Nolan hopefully and staring literally anywhere else.

Nolan smiles, and gives himself a little mental shake, and then confirms, “Yeah, the park,” in a firmer tone, smiles wider when Alec’s gaze darts back to his.

The small park a few blocks over from the clinic isn’t deserted, exactly, but it’s a cooler spring day and the only other occupants are a cluster of children gleefully ignoring the harried twenty-something trying to corral them, and an overly-focused crossfit type doing calisthenics with—for some inexplicable reason—their shirt off. Alec and Nolan both glance at, and then away from, the latter, and immediately start shaking with swallowed-back laughter; Nolan darts a look at Alec to find him looking back, and it’s—effortless, this time, to smile at him. To bump their shoulders briefly together before making a beeline for their usual table.

By unspoken agreement neither one of them brings up either the library, or its ensuing, awful aftermath. Instead Nolan asks, “So who’s Mrs. Taylor?,” in an offhand voice as he’s unpacking sandwiches and bags of chips and two bottles of soda from the bag he’d picked up at Daniel’s Diner, and then looks up and laughs, loud and delighted, when Alec’s face goes bright red.

“It’s not my fault!” Alec insists a few minutes later from around a mouthful of his turkey club on rye. “I didn’t even _do_ anything, she just—” He flaps his arms a little wildly in a gesture that Nolan honestly has no idea how to interpret, and he nearly chokes on his own full mouth as he laughs, has to down several quick swallows of soda to recover.

They keep going in that manner for a while, working their way through the food Nolan had brought and trading stories and—occasionally—pickles. If the conversation is a little more heavily weighted towards Alec’s seemingly never-ending supply of stories of the crazy antics of the suburban pet owner, neither mentions it. It’s there, though, hovering in the background and in the exaggerated care Alec uses when he slides another pickle slice out from inside his sandwich and offers it up to Nolan, his fingers held so, so still until Nolan takes it. Nolan has to look away as he pops the latest slice into his mouth, though he can’t help but follow Alec’s fingers as he takes them back; as he flexes and releases them like he’s trying to shake out lingering tension.

And maybe—maybe that’s what does it, that small, self-conscious movement. Nolan reaches forward and catches Alec’s retreating hand, pulling it to a gentle stop between them. Though he doesn’t even really have to _pull_ : the second he gets his fingers around Alec’s, Alec freezes, and not just his hand; his whole body goes ramrod-stiff and he stares at Nolan in wide-eyed surprise.

“Hey,” Nolan tells him gently, soothing-animal low and smooth, and tugs it carefully back towards himself, his intent clear.

But Alec doesn’t move, initially. “Nolan,” He breathes uncertainly, and his shoulders look so tense that Nolan’s genuinely afraid they’re going to snap.

So he reverses direction and leans into Alec instead of trying to encourage Alec to lean into him, and gets his mouth pressed gently to Alec’s, Alec’s hand still held carefully between their bodies. But Alec just makes a soft, startled noise and jerks back reflexively, and Nolan feels his heart drop into his stomach.

Except—except that Alec’s instinctive retreat had put him too far over the edge of the picnic table bench they’re both sitting on, and his arms pinwheel wildly as he starts to overbalance. Nolan has to let him go as Alec flails and unintentionally yanks his hand back to try and catch himself, eventually managing to clutch his hands around the bench seat between his legs to haul himself back upright. His expression is sheepish when he finally glances back up at Nolan from underneath his ducked brow, color dusting the tops of his cheeks and his eyes crinkled up in a comedic wince.

And Nolan can’t help it: he _laughs_.

He laughs hard and helplessly and to the point of breathlessness, one hand over his mouth to try and smother the noise and the other wrapped around his stomach as his abdomen starts to ache with the force of it. At first Alec just looks stunned, and then his expression melts into a softer surprise and an even _softer_ smile, though he eventually tries to cover up the latter with a deliberately overdramatic _harrumph_ and a sniff as he looks pointedly away. But the tense line of his shoulders relaxes into their more typical slump, and his lips keep twitching upwards at the corners.

After a minute or so—Nolan more than aware that the swell of relief in his chest, that the helpless bubble of his laughter, has roots far beyond Alec’s unintentional physical comedy—Nolan finally manages to swallow down the last of laughter, though a few more hiccuping giggles manage to escape him even as he’s leaning forward to try and get a hand on Alec’s arm.

“Hey,” He says again, and his voice is still soft but this time it’s also _easy_ , the word just one quiet exhalation of a syllable.

Alec looks back at him, his lips folded between his teeth, but he replies _hey_ after a second of hesitation; but he leans in this time when Nolan wraps careful fingers around his wrist and encourages him forward. Closing his eyes and making a small, relieved noise, Nolan presses his mouth to Alec’s, half-imagining that he can press the color back into Alec’s lips from where the bite of Alec’s teeth had forced it out, and Alec makes his own startled sound and yields to the pressure, opens his mouth.

Nolan wastes no time in licking inside, his hands coming up to clutch at Alec’s face as he presses forward harder into Alec, forcing him back against the edge of the picnic table behind them. Alec makes another startled sound and catches Nolan’s hips to steady him, though his hands immediately fly off and away before—Nolan voicing a distressed complaint—they settle tentatively back, the pressure of them almost more of a suggestion than a reality. The wave of relief Nolan feels at the touch is sharp enough to make tears prick at the corners of his eyes, humiliatingly enough, but Nolan just squeezes them tighter shut and concentrates instead on the slick stroke of Alec’s tongue against his own.

They’re going to have to stop. They shouldn’t even have _started_ , really, considering they are in _public_ , in a _park_ , but there’s a small, terrified, and _insistent_ part of Nolan that’s sure that if he pulls back, the awkwardness—the _fear_ —is going to return. That the only thing holding it at bay is the press of his lips to Alec’s and the press of Alec’s hands to his hips, curling tighter and tighter as the kiss continues and the both of them start to breathe faster, and harder; as the kiss turns slicker, and wetter.

And then the decision is taken out of their hands, because a car backfires down the street.

By the time Nolan’s rapid, overwhelming flood of adrenaline fades enough to allow him to think clearly, he’s on his feet five feet away from Alec, one hand—his still-wounded hand—covering his mouth. The metallic taste of blood under his tongue is making him gag, a little, and the low breeze threading through the park is burrowing its way underneath his newly torn shirt on either side of his hips. Even as gentle as it is, the brush of it against his skin still stings, but Nolan just _refuses_ to look down; refuses to confirm with his eyes what his nerves and shrieking instincts already know are there:

Ten thin scratches, carved into the skin just over Nolan’s hip bones.

“Nolan, I’m so...” Alec starts to breath through a fanged mouth, his gold-flared eyes wide and his clawed hands held frozen in the air, and then he stops himself, swallowing hard.

There’s a bright-red streak of blood drawn down across Alec’s bottom lip to his chin, and Nolan knows it isn’t Alec’s.

Nolan wants to say _I’m okay_. He _shrieks_ at himself to say _I’m okay_. To say something, anything, but if he’s going to do it then he’s going to have to swallow a mouthful of _blood_ first, the cut on the bottom of his tongue from Alec’s fang still steadily leaking into his mouth, and Nolan has the horrified certainty that if he tries it, he’s going to end up vomiting it and his and Alec’s lunch right back up, his stomach and chest and _everything_ a roiling, nauseous mess.

And then he looks up sharply, catching movement out of the corner of his eye, and he realizes that they’ve caught the attention of the crossfit type across the way. Nolan can’t see the person’s facial expression but he can recognize the stance, the _should-I-shouldn’t-I_ tension of trying to pick apart an interaction to see if there’s a need for interference. To see, in this case, if Nolan is in need of a _rescue_.

Adrenaline of a different type floods through Nolan and he drops his hand away from his face, pastes a sheepish, probably not-at-all convincing smile on his face and waves at them, stepping closer to Alec as he does it.

“Alec,” Nolan hisses, keeping his teeth together and forcing himself to swallow after all so that he can speak, though it takes everything in him not to gag. “Alec, you’ve got to drop the shift.”

But Alec just ducks his head, Nolan barely able to see his squeezed-shut eyes and grimacing mouth thanks to the angle. “I _can’t_ ,” He whispers back guiltily, balling up his fists—Nolan wincing, because there’s _no way_ that Alec’s claws didn’t just pierce his palms—and tucking them under his armpits.

And it’s clear that he’s _trying_ , and just as clear that it’s not working, and Nolan doesn’t know what to do. The crossfit type is still watching them warily, and Nolan steps closer still to Alec, trying to somehow project the impression that they’re _fine_ , that everything’s fine. Except that Alec makes a small, distressed noise, and Nolan jerks to look down at him in shock as he realizes—as he realizes that _he’s_ the problem.

That Alec is reacting to Nolan reacting to him, to the fear still clogged up tight in Nolan’s throat that he can _feel_ , that he’s struggling to breathe around, and he freezes.

It’s the exact wrong move, considering, but Nolan’s too overcome with surprise and guilt and a helpless, vicious _anger_ , some small childish thing shrieking _this isn’t my fault_ , to do anything about it. And so it comes down to _Alec_ to slowly scoot away, his clawed hands still tucked up under his armpits and—and dripping _blood_ onto his shirt, staining the gray fabric dark as Alec wobbles his way to his feet. His eyes when he flicks them up to look quick-and-away at Nolan are still golden, and when he grimaces Nolan spots the sharp points of his fangs hidden behind his lips.

“I—” Alec starts, and then immediately trails off. His shoulders slump even further, his whole back one rounded, protective hunch, and even with his face angled down and away from Nolan there’s no way for him to miss the shame writ plain across it. “I—I should go,” Alec finally manages, just barely forcing it out. “I’m going to go.”

And Nolan wants to say _don’t_ , idiotically enough, wants to make Alec sit back down and breathe through the shift, just like he’s seen Scott and Theo and Derek do for him, but. Instead he stands there dumbly as Alec hesitates, clearly waiting for Nolan to say _something_ , to give him some kind of cue, and then, when Nolan doesn’t, he just—sags. He sags for a brief, cracked-open moment, and then he straightens back up and pulls his lips back between his teeth; presses all the color back out of them with the pressure.

“I’m really sorry, Nolan,” He whispers, his fangs tangling the words up some, and then—with one last moment of hesitation—he turns and hurries back towards the animal clinic, his head ducked low and his hands still hidden underneath his arms.

Nolan stands staring after him, the scratches over his hips stinging and the cut on his tongue still steadily leaking blood; he stares after him for a long time.

\---

In the end, Nolan goes back to school, because he doesn’t know what the hell else to do.

He can’t go _directly_ there, of course, because that would be too easy: first he has to slink back to the animal clinic, his mouth still tasting distractingly metallic from the still-sluggishly bleeding cut on the bottom of his tongue, to retrieve his car. There’s no sign of Alec or Deaton but Nolan didn’t expect there to be, sure as he is that Alec is huddled up in the clinic’s office probably still trying to drop the shift. Or if not that, than washing the blood off his hands from where he’d pierced his own palms with his claws in his attempt to keep them hidden at the park. In his attempt to keep them hidden from _Nolan_ , as well as the rest of the world.

The taste of shame in Nolan’s throat is almost worse than the blood, when he thinks that.

He’d missed most of his afternoon classes but makes it to his last, which through some unbalanced karmic twist of fate he doesn’t have with Liam, Mason, or Corey. But even without supernatural senses he can _sense_ them somewhere in the school, hovering around and probably debating how to talk to him. Maybe Alec had texted them, Nolan thinks, and then immediately rejects; Alec wouldn’t have told them, not for his own sake but for Nolan’s. He’d wait for Nolan to act first, and then take his cue from that. Pressing his forehead up against the cool metal of his locker, Nolan tries to focus on breathing for a few long seconds, before the bell rings and he has to hurry to class.

But his reprieve lasts only as long as it takes him to stumble into the locker room and in front of his locker on complete autopilot, already halfway through changing out of his—torn, blood-stained, hidden underneath the jacket he’d pulled out of the back of his car—shirt, and into his practice jersey. He’s struggling to poke his right arm successfully through the sleeve when Liam pops up behind him like some kind of goddamn meerkat.

“ _Jesus_ , Liam!” Nolan yelps, jumping and tangling himself up worse.

Liam watches him try and right himself for a few agonizing, unimpressed seconds, and then he rolls his eyes and reaches forward to yank the hem of the jersey straight, finally allowing Nolan’s arm to pop out. The brush of his fingers across Nolan’s hip—just centimeters off from where the new, thin scratches from Alec’s claws are—causes Nolan to jump and his heart to slam up into his throat, his pulse reflexively starting to race, and the line of Liam’s mouth tightens as he drops his hands and takes a deliberate half-step back.

But that’s as far as he goes. “Where the hell did you go earlier? You left the school.”

Nolan scowls and reaches into his locker to retrieve his pads, trying to ignore the way he can see his fingers shaking as he does. “I didn’t realize I had to check in with my parole officer before leaving school property,” He mutters, aware even as he says it that he’s being an asshole but unable to stop himself.

Liam just scowls right back. “Don’t be a dick.”

And Nolan _wants_ to be, if only because it feels like one single thing that’s still within his control. He opens his mouth to say something equally snide, to play right into the trap that he’s set for himself, and then—and then the truth spills out of him instead.

“I went to go see Alec,” Nolan finds himself saying, low and his voice already curling in on itself with shame.

“Oh,” Liam says, apparently catching his tone. “Oh, um. How’d it—how’d it…” He trails off, apparently thinking better of asking _how’d it go_ when it so clearly didn’t go well.

“Well, a car backfired down the street in the middle of us kissing and some well-meaning Good Samaritan nearly tried to rescue me from the ensuing catastrophe, so, y’know, great!” Nolan answers, voice so falsely bright as to be verging on hysterical; Liam grimaces wide and deep before apparently managing to claw back control over his expression, and smoothing it out.

“Well, it, uh. It’s been a crazy few days, right? Maybe you should—should go easy on yourself, and him,” Liam tries, and then makes a face at himself and his less-than-suave delivery.

“Yeah, okay, _Theo_ ,” Nolan snaps back, because that’s possibly the least _Liam_ thing Liam has ever said, and Liam flushes guiltily. Nolan suddenly can’t handle it; Liam’s tone, or his hunching shoulders: the body-language equivalent of kid gloves. “Jesus christ, could you all stop treating me like I’m some kind of fainting maiden? I’m _fine!_ ”

But Nolan’s burst of temper apparently triggers _Liam’s_ temper, and he snarls back, “Okay, well, maybe _you_ should try to remember that _some of us_ have proof of how _freaked out_ we make you, now. I can hear your _heart_ , Nolan!” Then he jerks and glances to the side as he seems to realize, for the first time—as does Nolan—that Anderson is standing there side-eying them, and he adds, high-pitched and not at all convincingly, “Metaphorically!”

Nolan waits until Anderson rolls his eyes and wanders away, lacrosse stick in hand, to hiss, “Well maybe you should have the goddamn courtesy to pretend that you can’t, like a _normal_ person!”

The second he says it, Liam recoils, his mouth dropping open and his expression slackening in stunned surprise. Nolan stares back, equally wide-eyed.

“I—I’m sorry,” He stutters out immediately, and if he’d thought he’d been ashamed _before_ , well. “I didn’t mean—I didn’t mean that.”

Liam just keeps staring at him for a few long, agonizing seconds, and then he closes his mouth; Nolan can almost hear the _click_ his teeth make as they come together. “Okay, well,” He starts, and then stops for another few seconds before concluding. “I’m going to go. And, personally, I vote that the next time we see each other, we just—pretend this conversation never happened.”

“Okay,” Nolan says blankly, but he’s saying it to Liam’s back, Liam having already pivoted on a heel to head towards the locker room door, the line of his shoulders tight. Closing his eyes, Nolan braces his free arm against the sides of his locker and leans his forehead against it, breathes, “Shit,” low and quiet and heartfelt.

Practice goes better than it had yesterday, but only because Nolan’s focus has veered completely in the other direction. Instead of being so in his head that he can’t get out of it, he’s as far _out_ of his head as he can get himself, all his attention on thinking about anything other than how completely he’d screwed up today; just one long, continuous series of making one mistake after the other. Coach seems to appreciate the effort, anyway, yelling his name approvingly and clapping with his characteristic lack of attention to detail, heedless of Nolan’s hunched-in shoulders or the way his co-captains can’t seem to look at each other.

The second practice wraps Nolan bolts for the locker room, already half-changed by the time the majority of the team makes it back into the room. Liam gives him a wide berth and doesn’t so much as glance his way, but Corey winds up hovering in almost the exact middle between the two of them, his face an uncertain mask as he looks back and forth between them. And Nolan, he just—he just _can’t_ , not right now and—if his current track record holds—maybe not ever, and so he finishes pulling on his street clothes and darts out of the room before Corey can make his mind up one way or the other.

He’s going to go home. He gets in his car, and starts the engine, and tells himself to _go home_ , and then—and then he drives to Alec’s.

 _Nowhere else to go but up, really_ , Nolan argues to himself, his mind spooling back through the absolute _disaster_ that today had been, and then he tightens his shaking fingers around his steering wheel in a doomed effort to get them to stop.

Except that when he pulls into the parking lot of Derek’s apartment building fifteen minutes later, he immediately spots Theo’s truck parked in front of the building’s doors, Theo off to its side and slinging first one duffle bag and then another into the truck’s bed. He looks up almost instantly after Nolan turns into the lot, and his expression spasms into a grimace before he can apparently stop it; Nolan feels intuition and dread start to curdle in his gut. Forcing it down, Nolan concentrates on sliding his car into a spot and parking, on slowly and deliberately undoing his seatbelt.

He’s half-expecting Theo to have made some kind of break for it by the time he starts heading towards Theo’s truck, but Theo is still exactly where he’d been, though he looks briefly heavenward as Nolan starts to approach him and then leans his forearms against the tailgate, waiting.

“Going somewhere?” Nolan asks once he gets close enough. He’d been aiming for nonchalant but the question comes out tight, a little strangled.

The line of Theo’s mouth tightens, and instead of answering directly he tips his chin back towards the building and says, “Alec’s upstairs.”

“Theo, what’s going o—” Nolan starts to press, internally wincing at the edge of hysteria lining his words.

But Theo just interrupts him. “Nolan.” He murmurs, low but implacable, and then he repeats, “Alec’s upstairs.”

And then he pulls out his phone, which—to his credit—is actually lit up with an incoming call, and he steps away to take it. Nolan hears him say _hey, Derek_ and _yeah, we’ll be on the road soon_ , and Nolan feels the dread in his chest solidify right up into a tight, claustrophobic ball sat heavily in the middle of his guts. He glances up at the building, and then reflexively back at Theo, but Theo just meets his eyes and then jerks his chin towards the building again, and Nolan—Nolan swallows, and goes.

He takes the stairs because he _knows_ the elevator is going to feel too agonizingly slow. He takes the stairs and he takes them two at a time, heedless of the way that his thighs immediately start to burn, his body already worn out from practice. But Theo had said _Alec’s upstairs_ , had just repeated _Alec’s upstairs_ when Nolan had pushed, and then he’d told Derek _we’ll be on the road soon_. So Nolan ignores his body’s complaints and just forces himself to move faster, all too aware of the adrenaline starting to slip-slide through his veins—the cuts over his hip-bones stinging, and the scabs lining the back of his palm itching—and slams through the door leading out onto Alec’s and Theo’s floor.

Alec isn’t in the hallway but his front door is rolled open, so Nolan just blows his way inside, not bothering to stop, or knock, or call out. He hears scuffling upstairs as he comes into the main room, and then he looks up towards the loft and sees Alec just starting to descend his own impractical staircase, another duffle bag slung across his back and a backpack in one hand.

Alec must be pretty far inside his own head because it takes him rounding one rotation of his staircase before he spots Nolan and trips on his own feet, apparently having missed hearing or scenting him. In any other circumstances Nolan would laugh at the picture he makes as Alec flails and just barely manages to catch himself on the railing, his eyes going wide and a startled yelp escaping his mouth, but in _this_ circumstance he finds it just makes him _angry_ , and he plants his feet and glares up at Alec still clutching onto the railing for balance.

“What the hell are you doing?” Nolan demands, and only realizes that his hands have clenched into fists when he feels the scabs on the back of his wounded hand pull, and prickle.

“Nolan, uh, hey,” Alec stammers, straightening up some, though his shoulders stay hunched in. “I was going to—going to call you.”

“Before or after you’d fled the state?” Nolan snaps back, and ruthlessly ignores the way Alec’s wince sets something in his chest to twisting.

“I’m not—I’m not _fleeing the state_ ,” Alec denies, but he can’t meet Nolan’s eyes. He also hasn’t moved any further down the staircase, like he’s afraid of closing the distance between them. “I’m not—Yreka is still in California,” He insists, a little petulantly.

Nolan feels his brow furrow in confusion. “Yreka? Why are you going to…?”

“Derek’s there,” Alec reminds him, and he finally seems to realize that his hiding halfway down his staircase isn’t helping his case any, because he grimaces and starts jogging quickly the rest of the way down. When he reaches the end he leans the backpack that had been in his hand up against the last step and adds, “Remember? He went to go act as the McCall pack representative for the ward renewal that Shohreh is leading.”

“I _know_ that,” Nolan tells him sharply, and Alec flinches.

“Well, I’m—I’m going to go, go help,” Alec concludes, and only now looks up at Nolan, though he does it from underneath a ducked brow, a preemptive wince already on his face, because— _because…_

“Derek doesn’t _need_ help,” Nolan points out, higher-pitched than he’d like but the dread in his chest is twisting and transmuting into something else. “I was there when Scott put Shohreh on speakerphone to explain the whole thing, _remember?_ She said Derek’s job would primarily be to stand around looking pretty.”

The wince that Alec had been preemptively making blossoms into a full-body flinch. “Well, maybe Shohreh needs _two_ people standing around looking—”

But Nolan just cuts him off. “ _Alec_.” Alec stops, immediately, and has the decency to look a little ashamed of himself.

But that—that’s almost _worse_ , because…because _don’t ever be sorry for what you are_. That’s what Nolan had told Alec, here in this very room the first time they’d kissed, and he’d meant it. _He’d meant it_ , and he still means it. Or he still _wants_ to mean it, except that his heart is still racing, and it’s not just because he’s angry, or because he ran up several flights of stairs to get here. He knows—and he knows that _Alec_ knows—that it’s because Alec is standing within arm’s reach of him, now; could reach out and touch him, if he wanted.

 _Maybe_ you _should try to remember that some of us have proof of how freaked out we make you, now,_ Liam had snarled at him, and then he’d added, _I can hear your heart, Nolan!_

“You’re leaving because of me,” Nolan finally says, a statement of fact, and he can feel his heart pounding up against his ribs—a too-quick _ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum_ —as he does it.

And then he startles backwards, some, because Alec had immediately yelped _no!_ and taken a step towards him. Alec freezes with his arms outstretched from where he’d clearly been about to try and get his hands around Nolan’s face, and then he swallows, loud enough to be audible, and lowers them; Nolan just keeps staring at him, wide-eyed.

“No,” Alec repeats, softer but just as insistently. “It’s not—it’s not because of you.” But almost immediately he winces and corrects, “It’s not _just_ because of you,” like giving voice to the falsehood had physically stung him.

The adrenaline in his veins had already been making him feel shaky, but now Nolan has to stumble backwards a few steps until he can collapse heavily down onto the arm of Alec’s couch, his hands coming up to cover his mouth. He knows he should say something but he doesn’t know what to say, and then he catches sight of Alec’s eyes flicking there-and-away from his hand—from his _wounded_ hand—and he drops it back into his lap, covering the still-vivid scabs with his other palm.

“I almost killed you,” Alec reminds him, his voice barely more than a hoarse, rasping whisper. “And then today, at the park with the car—”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Nolan says, almost a reflex now, but it comes out stilted and dull and Alec’s expression twists with frustration.

“Yes it _was_ ,” Alec insists, and shakes his head sharply when Nolan looks up at him. “Yes it _was_ , Nolan. I thought… _we_ thought…but _clearly_ my control isn’t as good as we’d thought it was, and that makes me—makes me dangerous.”

He doesn’t say _to you_ , but it hangs there in the silence anyway, and Nolan can’t even deny it—not with a straight face and with one hand still hiding the damage Alec had done to the other. Not with the scratches Nolan can still feel twinging over his hips, or the dull, strange-feeling ache of the cut on the bottom of his tongue. All he can do is hold Alec’s eyes, all too aware of the raw, twisted expression on his face, and say nothing.

“You’re afraid of me,” Alec tells him, and Nolan opens his mouth to deny _that_ , and then—and then closes his mouth: _I can hear your heart, Nolan!_ Alec tries to smile at him, some, to remove the sting of it, but it’s shaky at best and a grimace at worst, even as he adds, tone gone almost a little jokey, “ _I’m_ afraid of me,” self-deprecatingly aware even as it’s clear that he means it.

“That doesn’t mean you should have to—have to _flee town,_ ” Nolan spits out, bitterness turning the edges of his words sharp, but it’s the _shame_ that really sets Nolan’s stomach to rolling; the shame at the remembered flare of _relief_ he’d felt as he’d watched Scott and Malia and Liam and the rest of the McCall pack get in their cars, and drive away from Beacon Hills, Nolan hidden behind Monroe’s right shoulder and Gabe stood close enough to Nolan’s back that Nolan could feel his heat. “Beacon Hills—Beacon Hills is your home.”

“I’m not _fleeing town_ , that’s not what I’m doing,” Alec disagrees, and sets his mouth mulishly and repeats when Nolan looks up at him, clearly ready to argue: “That’s _not_ what I’m doing. Shohreh—Shohreh’s helped trained _dozens_ of betas. She can—she said she could help train me.”

And Alec had meant it as a comfort, maybe, but Nolan can’t help but flinch, because he can perfectly imagine the conversation Alec must have had with her. It would have been at the animal clinic, probably, Alec drowning in guilt and unsure what the hell else to do, asking Deaton for advice and asking Scott for advice and finally remembering the way that Shohreh had cradled his face between her hands when Alec had been suffering his panic attack after they’d found out Theo was still alive that one awful morning. _I need help_ , he’d probably told her. _I need help so I don’t hurt anybody else_.

“We could figure it out here,” Nolan tries, though it comes out weak, because they’d _been_ trying to figure it out here, and it—clearly wasn’t working. Closing his eyes and swallowing past the tight, tight feeling in his throat, Nolan tells him, “I don’t want you to go,” choked and quiet and so, so childish; a helpless confession.

“It’s not—it’s not forever,” Alec points out, taking an unconscious step forward as he does; he freezes halfway through it and Nolan has to squeeze his eyes back shut, bury his face in his hands. A noise, then, and he feels the gentlest touch to the back of his hands, his wrists. When he jumps and looks up, Alec is kneeled down in front of him and so, so gently pulling his hands away from his face. “Hey,” Alec says, so quiet that it’s barely more than a puff of air, a suggestion of sound. “It’s not forever, right? Just until the next full moon, that’s when the ward renewal will be done.”

“That’s almost a month,” Nolan reminds him dully, even as the gentle pressure of Alec’s fingers around his wrists starts to make his fingers shake. But Alec doesn’t let go, though he keeps his touch light, so light.

“I know,” He acknowledges. “I know, but I’ve got to—I need to do this. For me,” He adds, his mouth curving in a shaky smile when Nolan looks at him. “For me as much as for you. More.”

Nolan wants to keep arguing, but it’s clear that it’s pointless. Alec has clearly made up his mind, and even if he hadn’t—Nolan sets his jaw against the fear pressing insistently against the backs of his teeth, the adrenaline quickening his pulse. After a few long, dragged-out moments where Nolan doesn’t speak, Alec takes his silence for what it is and smiles shakily again, and then he gently pulls Nolan’s hands forward until he can press a gentle kiss to the back of Nolan’s right palm; to the scabs drawn starkly down it. He holds his lips there for a moment, and then he brings both of Nolan’s hands up so that he can press his forehead against them; Nolan has to swallow back a hurt noise.

“It’s going to be okay,” He promises, giving Nolan’s hands a gentle squeeze before he releases them, and stands. Nolan raises his head to look up at him, and Alec’s expression spasms at whatever he sees on Nolan’s face, and he leans down to press his lips to Nolan’s forehead, his hands coming up to gently cradle Nolan’s face as he does. “We’re going to _make it_ okay.”

Finally he steps back, and looks down at Nolan, his lips pulling between his teeth as he—as he waits for Nolan to say something. But there’s a hard knot of certainty sitting rucked up under Nolan’s throat that says that if he tries to speak the dam of emotion that he’s been trying to swallow down is going to break, and so he keeps his jaw clamped shut, and looks away. He hears Alec exhale a quiet, heavy breath, but he doesn’t say anything else, just takes a few steps back until he can turn on his heel to retrieve the backpack he’d set down, start heading for the door.

Nolan looks up to watch him, a little helplessly, and so he’s already staring at Alec when Alec pauses by the door and turns to look at him over his shoulder. Alec catches his eye and gives him a flicker of a smile, and says, “I’ll see you in a month, okay? In a month.”

And then he’s gone.

\---

Nolan ends up accidentally falling asleep on Alec’s couch.

Alec had closed his apartment door after himself, and so Nolan had just—not gotten up, after he left. Instead he’d let himself fall backwards over the arm, and had stared blankly up at the ceiling, and then he’d—fallen asleep, apparently. He wakes up the next morning with a crick in his neck, already severely late for first period, and with several missed calls from his mother.

“Sorry,” Nolan tells her breathlessly, now upstairs in Alec’s loft and elbow-deep in one of his dresser drawers that is, inexplicably, filled with Nolan’s own clothes, the majority of which Nolan only has the vaguest memories of leaving in Alec’s apartment. “I fell asleep at Alec’s.”

Nolan’s mom sighs loudly, and directly into the phone’s speaker; Nolan has to lean several inches away from the phone with a wince. “You _know_ your father and I don’t mind if you stay at Alec’s, but you have to _tell us_ first, Nolan.” She chides; learning about werewolves had done wonders for Nolan’s parents’ attitudes about a lot of things, not the least of which was Nolan’s habit—accidental and _accidental_ —of passing out at Alec’s.

It’d helped that they genuinely adore Alec; Nolan winces, again.

“I know,” Nolan tells her, more than a little miserably. “I know, I’m sorry.”

She must catch his tone, or else he’s been doing a much more terrible job of concealing how he’s been feeling the last few days than he’d thought, because she just hesitates for a second and then asks, “Nolan. Is everything alright?”

 _No_ , Nolan thinks. “Yes,” He says aloud, his mind dredging up the memory of Alec kneeled down before him last night and promising that _everything is going to be okay_. “Everything is—everything is okay.”

Nolan’s mom’s silence is dubious; Nolan recognizes the quality to the dead air on the line.

“It was just a fight,” He tells her, all in a rush. “Just a—just a stupid fight,” He says, and leaves out the part where he means _fight_ a little more literally than she must think he does. “I’m sorry for not calling, I just got—caught up, in it.”

She hesitates for another second or two, and then she sighs again, softer this time. “Okay,” She says. And then, the undercurrents of sly humor threading into her tone, “You’re late for school, aren’t you?”

“I’ll make third period,” Nolan blurts out, and she laughs.

Nolan does make third period, but only by the skin of his teeth. He all but trips into his seat next to Mason, his hair still wet from Alec’s shower and his skin still smelling distractingly like Alec’s body wash, and tries to smile apologetically at Ms. Djordjevic, though from the look on her face, he hadn’t quite managed it. But the bell rings, and she looks away to start class, and Nolan slumps down further into his seat and covers his face with his hands, tries to concentrate on breathing.

When he drops them, Mason—and Corey and Liam behind him—are all staring at him.

“You knew,” Nolan realizes, his tone struggling to stay neutral.

Mason winces. “Theo told Liam,” He explains, a little apologetically.

And Liam had told Mason, who had told Corey; over Mason’s shoulder, Liam makes a face stuck somewhere between embarrassed and defiant. Nolan just folds his arms over his empty desk—his books still shoved hastily into his backpack by his feet—and drops his forehead down onto them.

“Hey, it’ll be okay,” Mason tries, whispering it low because Ms. Djordjevic has officially started the day’s material. “It’s only for a month, right? Not even. And then he’ll be back, and he’ll be—”

He trails off, but Nolan reflexively fills in _better_. It probably wasn’t what Mason was going to say, and even if it _was_ , Mason had stopped himself from saying it, but. Nolan curls a little more tightly into himself, the noxious mix of guilt and shame and—as much as he wants to pretend it isn’t there, _relief_ —from last night blooming once more in his chest, stretching out slim, insidious tendrils through his veins.

“Nolan—” Mason tries again, and then has to cut off, because Ms. Djordjevic—who has a frankly _supernatural_ ability to detect side conversations unrelated to the day’s reading—calls his name and pointedly thanks him for volunteering to answer her latest question.

But the jarring interruption forces Nolan to raise his head, and focus on the lesson, his hands eventually reaching to quickly yank his book and notebook out of his bag when Ms. Djordjevic calls on _him_ , next, and Liam immediately after, apparently having decided that the best way to keep the four of them on point was just flat-out direct supervision. It keeps Nolan distracted from his spiraling thoughts, anyway, and from the hard knot of _something_ —guilt, uncertainty, the dull ache at the center of himself that Nolan recognizes from long experience as _missing Alec_ , even though he’d seen him just last night—sitting in the middle of his throat. It doesn’t lessen it, any, but by the time Nolan makes it to the biology room for his and Liam’s and Mason’s and Corey’s next class, it’s a little easier to breathe around; a little easier to think.

And think he does. _It’s only a month, right?_ Mason had said. _And then he’ll be back, and he’ll be—_ He’ll be _something_ , Nolan thinks, finishing Mason’s sentence in his head as he stares sightlessly up at where Mr. Jeremy is trying and, from the blank faces around the room, failing to explain mitochondrial absorption. In a month Alec would come back from Yreka and Shohreh’s tutelage and he’d be _something_ , whatever that something was. Different. Not better, necessarily, and almost certainly not worse, but _different_. And he’d come see Nolan, and Nolan would be…

Nolan would be the same.

Nolan frowns. Mr. Jeremy must spot it because he sighs and mutters _let’s try this again_ , and restarts his most recent explanation; Nolan colors, and tries to rearrange his features into a more neutral expression of engaged—or at least _polite_ —interest. But in the back of his head his thoughts are churning, because— _because_ …

Because Alec hadn’t been the _only_ one who’d screwed up. He hadn’t been—he _isn’t_ —the only one who’d been afraid.

Nolan makes it through the rest of the day on autopilot. More than once Liam or Mason or Corey or some combination of the three has to physically course-correct him, hands on his shoulders to turn him in the right direction as they thread their way through the crowds of students, or fingers in the back of his shirt to yank him to a stop when he almost overshoots classroom doors in his daze. They try to bring him out of it, but after the few times that Nolan just absently answers, monosyllabic and probably completely off-topic, Liam literally throws up his hands and seems to resign himself—as do Mason and Corey—to making sure that Nolan doesn’t walk into a wall.

That indulgence lasts right up until Liam physically positions him in front of his locker in the locker room, and then Liam gives him a searching look and snorts.

Nolan blinks, something about the look on Liam’s face yanking him out of his head. “What?” He demands, a little warily; true to his word, Liam had seemed to be pretending that their argument yesterday never happened, but.

But Liam doesn’t bring up their fight, just strips his shirt over his head and reaches inside his locker for his jersey. “You know, there’s an obvious solution to your dilemma, here.” He says, a little airily; Nolan’s eyes narrow as he watches the side of Liam’s face.

“Oh yeah?” Nolan prompts, already on-guard, because there’s no _way_ Liam’s tongue isn’t firmly in his cheek; Nolan recognizes the look.

“Yeah,” Liam answers, and pulls out his stick before tipping his head to the side to meet Nolan’s suspicious gaze with a wide, shit-eating grin. “You could always ask Scott to bite you.”

Nolan stares at him for a long, surprised second, and then he scoffs, and rolls his eyes. “Asshole,” He mutters, but he’s smiling slightly in spite of himself as he reaches into his own locker for his jersey.

But he falters, halfway there, something about Liam’s joke catching his attention. _Scott_ , he thinks. Scott was bitten, just like Alec. Scott was bitten and everyone around him—including more than a few _humans_ —had had to readjust their entire worldview to match.

“Tell Coach I’m sick again,” Nolan instructs Liam breathlessly, already pivoting on his heel, jersey forgotten as he starts to hurry towards the door.

“Wait,” Liam calls after him. “What? Nolan!” And then, quiet enough that Nolan almost misses it as he dodges past Anderson coming through the locker room doorway, “Shit.”

Nolan’s nervous enough when he steps through Beacon Hills Memorial’s doors a little while later that he nearly crushes the takeout container he’s holding in his shaking hands; he has to consciously concentrate on gentling his grip, on smoothing out his breathing. It’s hard, though, when he can see the scratches on the back of his hand, still stark against his skin and made starker by his tight hold around the container; Nolan swallows.

“Nolan,” Ms. McCall says blankly when she spots him, and then her expression almost immediately falls.

She starts to get up, already gesturing him into the same side room that she’d gestured him and Mason into a few days ago, back when Nolan’s hand was still sluggishly bleeding, but Nolan shakes his head, blurts out quickly, “No!,” and then more quietly, some of the other hospital staff and patients around jumping at his outburst, “Um, no. It’s not—not what you think.”

“Oh—kay,” Ms. McCall replies, almost _exactly_ like her son had a few days ago, and Nolan has to bite back a helpless smile. “That’s vaguely ominous.” But Nolan just holds up the take-out container in his hands, and she seems to understand, her furrowed brow smoothing out.

She takes him to a break room up on the second floor, which is blessedly empty except for one exhausted looking resident passed out on the couch. Nolan eyes them warily, but Ms. McCall just rolls her eyes and prods the resident with her knee. “Hey, Mohanty. You were supposed to be back on shift fifteen minutes ago. You don’t get up and get to your rounds, Doctor Luera is going to take it out of your hide. _Again_.”

Apparently-Resident-Mohanty pops upwards like their ass had been spring-loaded, a wild expression on their face. “Sorry, Nurse McCall!” They stutter. “Thanks, Nurse McCall!” They add breathlessly, already halfway out of the room.

Ms. McCall just waves an absent hand over her shoulder in acknowledgement, her attention on yanking open a drawer filled with mismatched silverware so that she can pull out first one fork, and then another. “Do I need a knife for this?” She asks Nolan thoughtfully, and then hip-checks the drawer closed when Nolan shakes his head.

She sits down at the breakroom’s rickety table and gestures Nolan into the seat across from her. Nolan takes it, after a second’s hesitation, setting the container down carefully between them.

“You know,” Ms. McCall tells him as she reaches for the container and gets the lid flipped open, her tone deliberately off-hand, “you don’t actually have to come with a bribe in order to have a conversation. I only start charging when you get to Stiles’ level of general insanity.” She smiles at him, holding out one of the forks.

Nolan takes it. “I know,” He assures her quietly. “I know, I just…”

He trails off, and Ms. McCall hums. She doesn’t push, though, just spears a slice of sautéed beef and the french fry underneath it before popping it into her mouth. “God, that’s good,” She breathes, closing her eyes as she chews; Nolan’s lips flicker in a helpless grin.

She finishes her current bite and digs her fork into the container for another, this time making sure to get a slice of red onion along with her beef and french fry. She eats that bite, too, her attention easy and focused on the container full of _lomo saltado_ and not on Nolan, who plays with the fork in his hand but doesn’t move to use it.

“Do you,” Nolan finally starts after another half-minute or so of silence, “do you remember when you found out that Scott was a werewolf?”

Ms. McCall looks at him levelly, clearly trying to work out where he’s going with his question. “Sure do,” She finally says. “Kind of hard to forget.”

Nolan winces. “Right.” He agrees. “Right, obviously.”

Ms. McCall gives it another minute or so—and another few bites—and then prompts, more gently than Nolan thinks he really deserves, “Nolan?”

“How did you deal with it?” Nolan blurts out, all in a rush, his words tripping over themselves in his haste to get them out of his mouth before he loses his nerve. “I—I mean, how did you—how did you…deal with it?” He concludes, trying to course-correct midway through his sentence and then just repeating himself, helplessly and already silently berating himself.

Ms. McCall’s eyebrows had shot up when he’d asked the first time, her expression gone a little poleaxed, and it softens as he continues stuttering out his second, identical question. She studies his face for a few seconds—Nolan having to fight not to duck away from the attention, his cheeks flushing—and then she exhales, quietly, and slumps back in her chair, _lomo saltado_ momentarily forgotten.

“Oh, Nolan,” She confesses quietly. “I don’t think you want to follow my example, here.” Nolan looks up at her, confused, and Ms. McCall gives him a strained smile. “I was terrified of Scott, when I first found out. And I—I let him see it.”

She flinches reflexively, and so does Nolan. “Oh,” He breathes, hope curdling into disappointment in his chest.

“Also, honey,” Mrs. McCall adds, “I don’t have the same kind of...relationship,” she pauses, grimacing, so that they can both appreciate and then really simmer in the awkwardness as Nolan realizes with horror exactly what she means, “with Scott, as you do with Alec.”

“Right,” Nolan repeats, this time a little squeakily, his flushed cheeks now _flaming_. “Right, obviously.”

But his awkwardness actually seems to help put Ms. McCall back on firmer footing, and she smiles at him; wide, this time, and real. “Hey,” She says, ducking her head to catch his eye. “You’re going to figure this out. You know that, right? You and Alec, you’re going to get through this.”

But Nolan can’t share her same level of optimism. “I hope so,” He confesses softly instead, his eyes back on the fork in his hand as he plays his fingers over it.

“You will,” Ms. McCall says, easy and confident and leaving no room for doubt; Nolan finds some of the curdled disappointment in his chest melting right back out into hope, in spite of himself, as he looks up at her.

She smiles again, and Nolan sees Scott’s same quirked grin in the corners of her lips, in the crinkles next to her eyes, and finds himself smiling helplessly back. She holds his eyes for a moment and then reaches forward to nudge the container towards him. “C’mon, help me finish this. I’ve got to get back on duty here soon, or Doctor Luera is going to take it out of _my_ hide.”

Nolan gets back to his house later and—after espousing a number of heartfelt apologies to his parents for his unintentional disappearing act last night—heads up to his room to sit on his bed and frown thoughtfully at the wall, still feeling pleasantly full from his half of the _lomo saltado_ that he’d brought Ms. McCall.

 _Okay, so Ms. McCall was a bust_ , he thinks, and then he takes out his phone. He starts scrolling absently through his contacts, his thumb swiping up and then down across the screen as he watches the various names roll by. Mason would be an option, maybe, except that Nolan’s immediately certain that he’ll never be able to match Mason’s effortless level of benign zen towards things that would send other people running for the hills; that had sent _Nolan_ running straight into Monroe’s arms. Nolan winces, and forcefully shoves the thought away, and swipes his thumb again. Stiles, maybe? Nolan makes a face down at his phone, but files the thought away as an absolute last resort.

Then the scrolling of his phone automatically starts to slow, and Nolan’s eyes catch on one particular name. _Duh_ , he thinks to himself. _Of course_ , he adds mentally, and taps his thumb against the screen before the shrieking voice in the back of his head can convince him not to.

Lydia answers his video-call request with a preemptively skeptical expression. “Nolan,” She greets cautiously, her phone clearly propped up on her desk in her dorm room at MIT; Nolan can see papers spread out before Lydia and the stretch of her bedroom behind her.

“Hi,” Nolan starts, and then immediately clams up, a too-late wave of embarrassment washing over him.

Lydia squints at him for a few long, silent seconds, and then she rolls her eyes. “This is about Alec, isn’t it.” Phrased as a question or not, Lydia’s not actually asking.

“Yes,” Nolan squeaks out anyway, the unimpressed curve of one of Lydia’s perfectly plucked eyebrows causing his cheeks to flame.

“And you think I can help _why_?” She asks. Her words could come across as sharp, or annoyed, but they’re level; a little wry, a little curious. More than a little patient; Nolan finds himself relaxing, some.

Nolan swallows. “You’ve known about, about all of this—” He starts to wave his hands around in an expansive gesture before realizing that his doing so is sending his side of the video-call through a rollercoaster of blurred colors, and stops with another flush, “—for a long time. And,” He adds, thinking back to Ms. McCall’s point at the hospital, “and you’re, y’know. Dating Derek.”

She’s also dating _Stiles_ , but while that relationship _also_ carries its fair share of injury risks, that has more to do with Stiles’ general level of clumsiness than supernaturally-gifted abilities.

Lydia seems to follow his train of thought, at least as it pertains to Derek. “Sure,” She agrees easily enough. “But Derek is a born wolf, and so he never had to reexperience puberty with the added complication of fangs and claws.”

Nolan flushes _again_ ; at this rate, his cheeks were just going to be a permanent, blazing red. Glancing away from the screen, Nolan finds himself muttering, “ _Scott_ isn’t a born wolf, and he managed to date a human.” He’d said it only to make a point, the fact one that had been tumbling around in his head all day, but as he says it starts to solidify into a different type of certainty. “And—and _Allison_ was never afraid of him!”

The first part of his claim had been something that’d been eating at him, but the _second_ part is a just-realized rebuke to _himself_ ; Nolan nearly drops his head back into his hands before he remembers that he’s holding his phone.

Lydia doesn’t give him a whole lot of opportunity to wallow, anyway. “Don’t be an idiot, of course she was. She was a human being, not some air-headed action movie hero,” She counters, and doesn’t sound angry so much as school-teacher-irritated; talking with a student who’d missed something obvious. She also looks back down to scribble something on the paper in front of her, her teeth briefly catching her bottom lip. “She just learned how to deal with it. Not to mention,” She adds absently, “Allison was a bow-wielding badass descended from a long line of werewolf hunters.”

She doesn’t say anything as pointed as _and you clearly aren’t_ but she doesn’t need to; Nolan grimaces. _A bow-wielding badass descended from a long line of werewolf hunters_. Yeah, Nolan is about the farthest thing _from_ that, he thinks, slumping.

Except.

A kernel of an idea sprouts in his mind, and he finds himself absently straightening up, some. Lydia doesn’t notice, her attention still on her papers, but Nolan stares at the curve of her tilted-down skull and turns the idea over in his head, considering. _A bow-wielding badass descended from a long line of werewolf hunters_.

“I have to go,” He suddenly says, and Lydia looks up, startled. “Um, thanks,” He tells her. “Thank you, this was actually—this was great. Really.”

Lydia stares at him, clearly baffled. “Uh huh,” She agrees dubiously. “Sure.” She adds, but Nolan is already ending the call and lunging for his jacket, hurrying down the stairs and towards the front door as he yells an absent _I’ll be back_ at his clearly equally confused parents.

Ms. McCall answers the door in her pajamas, and Nolan only then realizes that he has no idea what time it is. He blinks back at her when she blinks at him, and then he blurts out, “Is, um. Is Mr. Argent here?”

“Hi to you, too, Nolan,” Ms. McCall says pointedly, but then she seems to fully internalize his question and her face starts to split in a wide, slow grin. One which Nolan doesn’t fully understand until Ms. McCall clarifies, “Did you say _Mr._ Argent?,” in a genuinely _delighted_ tone of voice.

“Um,” Nolan responds. “Yes?” He opens his mouth, fully prepared to offer an explanation, but Ms. McCall has already turned away, sing-songing loudly as she walks deeper into the house, _oh,_ Mr. _Argent_ , _there’s somebody at the door for you!_

Nolan stares after her, bemused, as she leaves him framed in the still-open doorway. He’s about to hesitantly call for her when Argent appears in her stead—grimacing to the side, where Nolan can just hear Ms. McCall telling him in a low voice to _be nice,_ Mr. _Argent_ —and looks at Nolan.

“Hi, Nolan,” He greets carefully, clearly confused as to what the hell Nolan could possibly want with him.

“Hi, um. Hi, Mr. Argent,” Nolan stutters out, and jumps when he hears a muffled burst of laughter from inside the house; Argent’s expression goes dry.

“Is there…something I can help you—?” Argent starts to venture, when Nolan just stares at him, a sudden burst of nerves filling his throat.

But:

“Can you teach me to fight?” Nolan blurts out, the request said so fast that the words jam up against each other; a pile-up of slammed-together syllables.

Argent blinks at him, clearly thrown. “Teach you to fight,” He repeats carefully, eyes narrowing thoughtfully as he studies Nolan’s face; Ms. McCall reappears in the doorway behind Argent, her gaze curious but gentle as she studies Nolan, too.

“Yeah, um. Yeah,” Nolan tells him, his hands rising to tangle nervously in front of his chest as he looks back and forth between them and tries to explain. “I was—I was talking to Lydia about, about me and Alec. And I brought up Alli—”

He starts to say her name, and then freezes, his eyes darting to Argent’s face. Argent’s expression spasms, briefly, but he smooths it back out almost immediately and gently prompts, “You brought up Allison.”

“Yeah,” Nolan agrees, his nerves back in his throat and fluttering. “Allison and—and Scott, and how she wasn’t—” He stops himself from saying _how she wasn’t afraid_ , remembering Lydia’s pointed rebuke, and corrects, “—how she could date Scott even though she was human because she was a—a—” He flushes again, but then gives up and says, “ _a bow-wielding badass descended from a long line of werewolf hunters_.” He blush deepens as both Ms. McCall’s and Argent’s eyebrows climb. “Lydia’s words,” He mutters, glancing away from them.

Argent doesn’t respond right away, and neither does Ms. McCall, and Nolan feels his shoulders start to hunch. Said out loud like this, finally—even though he hasn’t actually come right out and said _please teach me to be a bow-wielding badass, just like your daughter_ —the whole thing just seems laughable. Nolan flinches and starts trying to figure out how to backpedal, how to say _nevermind,_ and scurry the hell away, back to his house where he can smother his embarrassed face in his pillow and wonder what the _hell_ he was thinking, except…

Except Argent says, “Okay.”

Just that. No only words, no other clarifications. Just _okay_. Nolan jerks and stares up at him, wide-eyed. Argent meets his gaze levelly.

“Okay,” He repeats, and more firmly this time; Nolan absently wonders who the added firmness is for, him or Argent. “I can teach you to fight.”

“Oh,” Nolan says, after another few seconds of stunned silence. “Oh, okay. Um, great. Thank you,” He adds, belatedly, and grimaces.

Argent doesn’t hold his awkwardness against him, just waits patiently and then, when Nolan doesn’t say anything else or otherwise move, he suggests, a low, benign sort of amusement coating his words, “Why don’t we start tomorrow?”

“Oh!” Nolan exclaims, jerking, only then realizing that he’s standing on the McCall’s porch late at night, with Ms. McCall and—now that he’s looking for it—Argent both in loose, comfortable clothes; ready for bed. “Yeah, of course. Tomorrow—tomorrow is good,” He concludes lamely.

“Okay,” Argent agrees, and nods like that’s sealing their deal, but it’s Ms. McCall who steps forward to press a soft kiss to Nolan’s head and then push him gently back towards his car, murmuring _tomorrow_ against the crown of his head.

Nolan goes, stammering out an awkward goodbye to them both, waving awkwardly when they reply in-kind. They do him the favor of stepping back inside after and shutting the door, leaving Nolan free to all but run back to his car, excitement and dread and a delayed sort of adrenaline all mixing in his bloodstream. He gets inside and closes the door after himself, his hands rising to wrap around the steering wheel, squeezing and relaxing and squeezing and relaxing. His phone is digging into his thigh in his pocket so Nolan takes it out, and then pauses, looking down at the picture of him and Alec on the lit-up screen.

“Tomorrow,” He tells the inside of his car firmly; tells that photo of him and Alec. He sets his phone carefully in his cup-holder, and then he gets his car started, and starts heading home, promising, “ _Tomorrow_ ,” once more under his breath.

\---

But the next day—stood behind the open trunk of Argent’s hulking SUV in one of the less-used Preserve parking lots and watching while Argent sorts through duffle bags of supplies—Nolan begins to think that he’s maybe made a mistake.

Argent doesn’t seem to notice his sudden preoccupation, just turns around at one point to shove a bag into Nolan’s arms. “Here,” He says absently, and doesn’t wait for Nolan to fully grab it before letting it go to turn back for his trunk; Nolan has to make a bit of a wild scramble to keep hold of the bag, and he frowns thoughtfully down at it as the bag gives and folds easily under his touch.

But then he looks back up, distracted by Argent muttering quietly under his breath to himself, and feels his throat squeeze right back shut as he looks back into the open space of Argent’s trunk; as his eyes land on a sleek black case that Argent had opened and then pushed absently to the side. Nolan stares at its contents, his arms tightening around the bag in his arms, and then all at once he thinks _I can’t do this_.

Argent stops what he was doing and looks back at him, brow furrowed. “What?”

Nolan’s head jerks up and over to him, his eyes wide. _Oh, I said that aloud_ , he realizes with another sharp spike of panic, but.

 _But_.

“I can’t—I can’t do this,” Nolan repeats, and flushes when his voice _shakes_. He clears his throat, and tries to sound firm, but just manages, “I don’t—I don’t think I can do this.”

Humiliation _floods_ through him as Argent does nothing but continue to stare at him in silence, and Nolan waffles for a second, the _stupid_ bag still in his arms, and so he forces himself to swallow past his painfully tight throat and then stumble forward so that he can set the bag back in Argent’s trunk.

“I’m so sorry for—for wasting your time,” He says as he does, flushed scarlet and with his _hands_ now shaking; he can see it when he pulls them back from the bag and starts backing away. “I’m just going to—”

He jerks a thumb over his shoulder in the universal gesture for _go_ —which is idiotic, they’re miles outside of town and Argent _drove him here_ , but he also can’t imagine living through the added humiliation of Argent driving him _back_ —and starts to turn, when he feels a hand on his shoulder. He jumps, but the grip isn’t tight, and Argent removes it the second Nolan spins reflexively back around to stare at him.

“Nolan,” He says gently, once Nolan’s looking at him again.

Just that, just his _name_ , but Argent might as well have shouted an accusation for the swell of _shame_ that blooms and then bursts in Nolan’s chest, making the tips of his fingers and toes sting with it. Nolan crosses his arms tightly over his chest and bites his lip, and looks away from Argent; looks away from his open SUV trunk behind him, and the sleek black case still sitting open within it.

Finally he confesses, his voice barely more than a whisper: “I don’t want to hurt anyone.”

When he looks helplessly back up, Argent looks stunned, his eyes wide and his mouth dropped softly open. Nolan winces and jerks his gaze back down, his eyes squeezing shut of their own volition.

“I asked you to teach me how to fight, and I—I _meant that_ ,” He tries to explain, over-loud because otherwise he can’t get the words out past his tight throat. “But I _can’t_ …but I don’t want to…” _hurt anyone_ , he thinks again, but doesn’t say, because it just sounds so _childish_ ; so stupidly naive.

Except that when he chances another look up, Argent’s silence starting to saw at his chest, Argent isn’t looking at him in frustration, or judgement. He’s not looking at him at _all_ , actually; he’s looking at the open trunk. He’s looking at the open, sleek black case.

At the crossbow inside.

Nolan stares in surprise as Argent suddenly turns back to him and holds up a single finger— _wait_ —and then takes the few steps necessary so that he can lean into the open trunk, slam the case lid down and then flick the latches closed with two sharp, definitive _clicks_. That done, he shoves the case even further back and turns, one hand still braced on the SUV’s bumper, to crook a finger at Nolan: _come here_.

And Nolan doesn’t know what else to do, so he goes.

He stops right by the open trunk but Argent just huffs, gestures again: _up_. So Nolan—does that, slowly pushing himself up and onto the bumper so that he’s sitting in the open trunk. He keeps his head tilted down the whole time, too embarrassed to look up, but it winds up not mattering; Argent crouches down some so that he and Nolan are of a height. Nolan jerks his gaze away, initially, his cheeks once again flaming. But then he looks back, helplessly, because the only thing he’d seen on Argent’s face during that brief glance had been a patient sort of curiosity.

“Pretty stupid, huh,” He finds himself joking miserably. “Thinking I could learn to fight without having to hurt anyone.”

But to his surprise Argent just studies him for a few seconds longer, and then shakes his head. “Not stupid at all,” He disagrees quietly, and Nolan stares at him. Argent huffs a small sound and then glances away, but Nolan doesn’t think the brief burst of frustration is directed at him; Argent appears to be chewing over his next words. Finally he looks back at Nolan and tells him, “Learning to fight doesn’t mean learning to hurt people.”

Nolan can feel his own expression go skeptical, even while a part of himself screeches with anxiety at the idea of _talking back_ to Chris Argent. Argent must properly interpret the look on his face because he grimaces and then exhales a small, self-deprecating laugh, his grimace becoming a quirked grin.

“Learning to fight doesn’t _have_ to mean learning to hurt people,” He tries instead, his eyes searching Nolan’s face to see if his second attempt at making whatever point he’s trying to make is landing any better.

But Nolan still doesn’t know what he’s getting at. He’s pretty sure the _dictionary_ would disagree, if nothing else, and besides: Nolan has—seen Argent in action. Argent, and Scott, and Malia, and the rest of the McCall pack, too. Liam at the zoo and the hospital, furious and fang-mouthed and throwing people twice his size into walls and over tables. Theo at all those places and more; Theo back in Derek’s building during Monroe’s attack that’d nearly resulted in his death, where _fighting_ had pretty much equated to ripping Monroe’s people apart. Ms. McCall, even, at the hospital that one time with that ridiculous stun baton. Monroe, with her guns. Monroe, with her arrows.

Monroe, herself.

Argent watches Nolan’s face like he’s seeing all those thoughts play out right across his still-flushed cheeks, the twisting curve of his mouth. Nolan gives him an apologetic shrug, eventually, his eyes flicking away from Argent’s again, unable to maintain the direct eye-contact. _Now_ is when Argent is going to get frustrated, Nolan thinks. _Now_ is when Nolan’s apparent obtuseness is going to overwhelm Argent’s less-than-legendary patience.

But Argent just says his name again, quietly, and waits until Nolan’s looking at him to ask, low and level, “Why did you join Monroe?”

Nolan immediately blanches, flinching like Argent had just struck him, rather than asking a simple question. “I don’t… Why would you… What does that…?” He stammers out, and his fingers—which he’d left wrapped around the bumper from when he’d hauled himself up—go white-knuckled as he braces himself against the sudden flood of panicked guilt and regret and shame.

Argent winces, slightly, his mouth twisting in an apologetic grimace, but he forges ahead regardless. “Can I take a guess?” He asks after a moment, his voice still quiet; still gentle.

Nolan stares at him, but he doesn’t know how to say _no_ , how to say _I don’t want to talk about this_ , and so he doesn’t say anything. Argent seems to consider his silence for a long few seconds, and then he lets out a slow, steady breath, and guesses anyway.

“You were afraid,” Argent tells him, his voice low and smooth and an almost hypnotic murmur. “Even before the Anuk-ite, you were afraid.”

Nolan jerks, stunned. Argent just holds his gaze, his own calm and steady and a little heavy, just a bit, at the corners of his eyes.

“You were afraid because you thought that, if something else—something like the Beast—came,” Argent waves a hand, seemingly to encompass Beacon Hills, and all the danger and strangeness that comes with it, “you wouldn’t be able to protect yourself, or the people you care about.”

Nolan just keeps staring at him, his breathing starting to speed, his grip around the SUV’s bumper tightening to the point of _pain_.

“But, Nolan—” Argent pauses, and for the first time since he’d started he looks away from Nolan, his tongue briefly touching his bottom lip. After a second he looks back, and the line of his mouth softens as he murmurs, “What if you didn’t have to be afraid?”

There’s a glimmer of understanding sparking in the corner of Nolan’s mind, a revelation just waiting to be had, but the guilt and shame from Argent’s dragging Nolan’s worst mistake back out into the light— _why did you join Monroe_ —is crowding it out. Argent searches his face, and then he closes his eyes, very briefly, and Nolan finds his own spiraling thoughts interrupted some with surprise as he catches grief, and regret, go chasing each other across Argent’s expression.

Argent opens his eyes back up. “Some people do learn to fight because they want to hurt people,” Argent admits, and then, in seeming explanation: “You had the pleasure of meeting my father.” His voice is a carefully controlled sort of wry, a modulated sort of resigned, but hovering underneath his easy acceptance is something else; Nolan stares. “He and my sister had a…particular take on our family’s motto.”

“We hunt those who hunt us,” Nolan murmurs before he can stop himself; he’d heard Gerard say it enough, and Monroe had been parroting it back like a creed—like _scripture_ —by the end.

Argent’s head jerks smoothly but quickly sideways before returning to center, a reflexive reaction; an unconscious wince. He nods, after a moment.

“You mentioned Allison, yesterday,” Argent says, and Nolan flinches, again, but Argent just shakes his head lightly, dismissing Nolan’s obvious discomfort. “Did anyone ever tell you the new motto she created for our family?”

Nolan shakes his head mutely.

“ _Nous protégeons ceux qui ne peuvent pas se protéger eux-mêmes_ ,” Argent recites smoothly, and then immediately translates: “We protect those who cannot protect themselves. Allison—” He cuts off, and Nolan can see him swallow; can hear him clear his throat, “Allison didn’t just die _fighting_ the Oni, and the Nogitsune. She died protecting her friends.”

Argent looks briefly to the side, one hand rising to his face to run thumb and middle finger under his left and right eye respectively; thumbing away the glimmer of wetness that Nolan can see reflected in the late afternoon light. After a half-second Nolan realizes he’s staring in startled fascination at the sight and he jerks his attention away, looking literally anywhere else. He feels it, though; he feels some of the helpless tightness in his chest start to unwind, that barbed _you’re acting like a scared child_ feeling starting to fade. He relaxes his grip on the bumper, some, loosening his terrified brace against the worst mistake he’s ever made.

After a half-minute or so Argent clears his throat again, and Nolan darts a look at him, and then turns his head more fully back forwards when he sees that Argent seems to have regained his usual level expression.

“But you don’t have to do that either,” Argent finally continues, picking back up on what he’d been saying. “You don’t have to learn to fight to protect others. You don’t even have to learn to fight to protect _yourself_.”

Nolan feels his brow furrow, because hadn’t Argent _said_ …?

Argent just smiles ruefully, clearly understanding Nolan’s confusion. “Just because you _can_ fight, doesn’t mean you have to, or even should. Sometimes the most important part of learning to fight,” Argent tells him, “is learning how _not_ to fight.” He pauses, and then he says, soft and low but _certain_ , “Sometimes the most important part of learning to fight is knowing that you could, but knowing that you don’t _have_ to.”

Nolan feels his mouth drop softly open, and that glimmer of understanding he’d seen sparking in the corner of his mind earlier blossoms fully into the revelation it’d been hovering on the edge of becoming. _What if you didn’t have to be afraid?_ Argent had asked, and Nolan feels possibility take root in the center of himself, because _what if_ he could be something other than afraid? And not because there wasn’t anything to fear, but because he _could_ protect himself, and the people he cares about, if he needed to. Because he _could_ fight, if he wanted to.

Because he could _not_ fight, if he didn’t want to.

Argent’s eyes are bright as Nolan finally looks back up at him, the corners of them crinkled up as he searches Nolan’s face and apparently likes what he sees. He studies it for a few seconds longer, and then he holds up another finger, another _wait_ , and leans forward around Nolan to retrieve the bag that he’d originally handed Nolan before Nolan’s panicked demurrer, and that Nolan had hurriedly shoved back inside the trunk. Nolan watches curiously as Argent leans back with the bag in hand, and then he jumps slightly and accepts it as Argent holds it back out.

“Don’t learn to fight so that you _can_ fight,” Argent repeats, and tips his chin pointedly at the bag, a clear instruction to open it. He wants until Nolan has gotten over an instinctive twist of hesitation and pulled the zipper carefully open, until he’s folded the flap of the top carefully back, and then he concludes, “Learn to fight—”

“—so that I don’t have to,” Nolan finishes for him, his voice barely more than a hushed whisper as his fingers skim over the ropes, and the clinking bottles of mountain ash, and the leather-wrapped bundles of sonic emitters, that the folded-back flap had revealed.

He looks up, and Argent nods, just once.

“Okay,” Nolan agrees after a long few seconds, his eyes falling back down to the bag; to the bag, with not a weapon in sight. He swallows, and looks back up to meet Argent’s eyes, and says, this time firm and steady and _certain_ , “Okay. Teach me how to fight. I want to learn—” _how not to_ “—fight.”

\---

If Nolan had thought Argent was going to take it easy on him after their conversation that first day, he’d been _fucking kidding himself_.

“Ow,” Nolan says contemplatively, dropping down into the free space left on Liam’s living room couch and trying, in vain, to find a position that doesn’t cause anything to twinge.

He’d spent the last two days working on snare traps, the critical importance of which Nolan had learned relied not necessarily on the quality of the trap itself, but on _not forgetting where you’d placed them_. A fact which Argent had seen fit to mention only _after_ he’d instructed Nolan to pepper the Preserve with them, and after pronouncing which he’d left Nolan to work his way back through the trees on his own. Nolan had spent an indignant and increasingly nervous two minutes just staring after Argent in disbelief, and then—darting looks around at the seemingly innocuous forest floor with a sinking feeling in his chest—had started to pick his way back.

He had not, it’d turned out, remembered where he’d put all his traps; on the bright side, he could now claim from personal experience that he knew that they worked.

“You reek, dude,” Liam tells him ruthlessly, and then he gives a wordless shout of outrage because Corey had taken advantage of his distraction to run Liam’s Princess Peach right off the Rainbow Road; across the room in the loveseat Corey throws up his hands with a cheer as Yoshi goes gliding serenely past the carnage and into first place.

“Shut up,” Nolan mutters, but it’s toothless, partially because he’s too exhausted to put any _oomph_ behind it and partially because Liam’s probably right; he’d been working with Argent in nearly every free minute he’d had for the last two weeks, and despite his best efforts at scrubbing himself clean every night, his skin still felt like it was beginning to gain a ground-in layer of sweat and dirt and mountain ash.

Mason’s head pops up over the far edge of the coffee table from where he’d apparently positioned himself on the floor for maximum TV-watching sight-lines, for all the good it’s doing him; Luigi bumbles straight into a banana peel as Mason studies Nolan instead of the screen.

“No, dude, he’s serious,” Mason tells him, mostly earnestly but with his lips twitching tellingly at the corners. “You really do, even I can tell. I wouldn’t be a true friend if I didn’t tell you that you smell _foul_.”

Nolan scowls and chucks a throw pillow at Mason’s head, clipping his ear even though Mason yelps and ducks—Nolan’s aim had really been improving these past two weeks—but then he gives up and goes to borrow Liam’s shower.

When he gets out, he’s got a missed call and a video message from Alec. Nolan spends a few frozen seconds just staring at the notification, and then he slowly retrieves his phone from the steam-slick counter and sits down on the closed toilet lid to watch it, a towel wrapped around his waist.

“Hey,” Video-Alec greets, stretched out on his stomach on the bed in the dim light of the guest bedroom he’d been staying in. His eyelids are drooping sleepily but the quirked smile on his lips—the part of it that Nolan can see, anyway, the bed’s comforter rucked up and covering some of Alec’s face—is warm, and Nolan feels an answering warmth bloom in his chest. “I watched Shohreh perform the next part of the ward renewal today, and may I just say, I think I did a _fabulous_ job standing around looking pretty. A-plus showing, can’t be topped. Anyway—”

The video rambles on for a few more minutes, and Nolan watches it again, and then again, yelling an irritated _okay, whatever_ when Liam bangs loudly on the bathroom door and announces that he’d left Nolan some clean clothes to wear in his bedroom and was, to quote, _going to burn what you’d been wearing earlier, because_ christ. He might not actually be joking but Nolan doesn’t care, lip between his teeth and his finger hovering over Alec’s number as he debates with himself. Then he catches sight of the tiny thumbnail of Alec’s video in the corner of the screen, the soft easy smile on his face detectable even still, and he makes up his mind.

“Hey, Alec,” He says softly, when the call connects.

And so it goes.

For the next week and a half, Nolan learns how to set—non-lethal—traps, and lines of mountain ash, and carefully choreographed mazes of sonic emitters to force targets into both. He learns how to fill delicate glass bulbs with carefully concocted mixtures of aerosolized wolfsbane—strong enough to momentarily stun a supernatural, but too weak to kill—that Argent then shows him how to hide in the Preserve’s layer of leaf litter, or underneath heaps of dusty dirt to disguise them as rocks.

And then, three days before Alec and Derek are due back from Yreka, Nolan shows up at the literal crack of dawn to his and Argent’s usual deserted Preserve parking lot to find it not-so-deserted.

“Welcome to your final exam,” Argent tells him wryly, and tosses him a simple black backpack; Nolan almost fumbles it, still wildly off-footed, and then he looks back up at the handful of McCall supernaturals scattered around the lot.

Scott gives him a crinkle-eyed smile from his spot by the Jeep when Nolan catches his gaze, seemingly unbothered by Malia all but asleep standing up and leaning against his shoulder. Nearby, Theo had dropped the tailgate of his truck down and hopped up to lean back against it and the wheel-well, Liam mumbling grumpily to himself—or possibly to Theo, though if so Theo is _one-hundred percent_ ignoring him—from where he’s stretched out on the tailgate with his eyes closed and his head pillowed on one of Theo’s thighs. They all look sleepy and early-morning-soft in the weak gray sunlight, but Nolan still feels a small, anxious twist in his gut as he looks at them, his fingers tightening around the backpack in his arms.

“You’ll get a thirty minute headstart,” Argent murmurs to Nolan ten minutes later, the others dispatched to various starting points around the Preserve with a warning that Argent would _know_ if they started early. “Malia and Theo are going to be your biggest problems.”

“Not Scott?” Nolan forces himself to ask, the two of them stood once more by Argent’s open SUV trunk so that Nolan can fill the backpack Argent had thrown him—empty, as it’d turned out—with whatever supplies he thinks he might need; his hands are shaking, but Argent doesn’t mention it, so Nolan doesn’t, either.

Argent shakes his head, and the way his lips quirk is wry if fond. “Scott may be a True Alpha, but up until a few years ago he was just your standard asthmathic teenager. Malia, on the other hand,” Argent’s gaze consciously or not rises to where he’d sent Malia off into the woods to take up her position, “spent the majority of her life living in these woods as a coyote. She knows them like the back of her hand. Better than, maybe.”

Nolan nods in acknowledgement. “And you trained Theo,” He concludes quietly, glancing up at Argent for confirmation that he’d properly guessed Argent’s second point.

To his surprise, though, there’s something a little—pinched, about Argent’s expression when he catches it. “I did,” He agrees carefully, but then he adds—then he _reminds_ —Nolan softly, “But I wasn’t the only one.”

 _The Dread Doctors_ , Nolan realizes, and winces; he’d never been forced to face them, but he’d heard the stories. Maybe more importantly he’d heard the _silences_ whenever the McCall pack accidentally bumbled into a reminder of them, Theo’s expression going a telling sort of neutral and Corey’s going tight, while all around them everyone else struggled not to look their way. Nolan swallows.

“Any last advice?” He finally ventures, picking up his now stuffed-full backpack and looking hopefully up at Argent.

Argent gives it a few seconds of expectant silence, and then one corner of his mouth quirks up. “Yeah,” He says. “Don’t step in your own traps.”

Nolan scowls.

But Argent had been prophetic. Just barely under an hour into Argent’s so-called final exam—desperately trying to keep a visual map of where he’d placed his various traps fixed in his mind while _also_ trying to get his adrenal gland to stop convincing his ears and eyes that innocuous forest-shapes are panic-worthy—Nolan whips around at the sound of quickly crunching leaves and snapping twigs to see a dark shape barreling towards him through the trees. His eyes widen, and he takes a few hasty steps to the left—the blurred shape adjusting to follow—and then Scott runs directly into a circle of half-buried rope.

Even given the tense circumstances, Nolan can’t help the sputtering, helpless laugh that escapes his mouth as, in quick succession: Scott’s eyes go comically wide as he sees or hears or senses _something_ about the trap, too late; he gives an undignified squawk as the rope snaps closed around his ankle; and he gives the forest an incredibly dry look, his body now hung upside-down and with his hair, and shirt, and arms now falling to dangle ridiculously towards the ground.

“Well, this is depressingly familiar,” He comments wryly, his body starting to slowly rotate in space as the rope twists and untwists with the gentle breeze.

Nolan grins at him, and then—another sound catching both his and Scott’s attention—he gives Scott an even wider smile and takes off, leaving Scott quite literally hanging; Argent had handed each of the McCall supernaturals a radio before he’d sent them off, with instructions to contact him if and when they’d been successfully caught. _And how long are you planning on leaving us trapped?_ Liam had wondered pointedly, and Argent had just smirked.

Nolan doesn’t know where the other three might be and that’s a problem. _If you’re being hunted over an open area, you have to find a way to narrow the usable field_ , Argent had told him, and then he’d held up a sleek silver emitter; Nolan squeezes his eyes briefly shut as he consults his mental map, and then he takes a sharp right through the middle of two crooked, moss-covered trees.

He’s expecting Liam but he gets Malia. And he really _gets_ Malia, four-legged and bright-blue-eyed and snarling silently at him from the edge of the clearing that he’d stopped to rest in, hands on his knees and his breaths barely more than pants. Nolan stumbles back a few steps as Malia starts to advance, first at a slow, predatory stalk, and then at a _run_ , and then he yelps and goes down on one hand—his other flying up and out—when Malia _lunges_ , clearly intending to clear the last ten feet between them at a leap.

But then she slams into a completed barrier of mountain ash, and goes tumbling down to the ground with a surprised _whuff_.

For a moment Nolan panics that she’s hurt—she’d hit the barrier _hard—_ and he scrambles forward on his hands and knees, but Malia’s already on her feet, shaking her head as if to clear it and flicking her ears back and forth. She presses her nose against the barrier once and then again, and then starts trotting around the edge of it, clearly looking for the break. It doesn’t take her long to discover there _isn’t_ one, and then she tips her head to look at him, curiosity clear even on her canine face.

Nolan holds up his blackened left palm; the one he’d thrown up and thrown _out_ when she’d rushed him. “Just had to complete the circle,” He explains, and smiles shakily, adrenaline thick in his throat and his heart still _pounding_.

Malia considers his palm for second and then—and then _sits_ , her muzzle dropping open and her tongue lolling. Nolan stares at her in surprise—that’s…he’s pretty sure that’s her canine way of _smiling_ at him—and then he jerks and blinks when one of Malia’s ears suddenly flicks sideways, her head turning to follow. All at once she’s back on her feet and barking softly at him, and Nolan doesn’t get it until he does.

“ _Shit_ ,” He hiss-whispers, and scrambles to his feet, and scrambles _away_.

 _Theo or Liam, Theo or Liam_ , he debates with himself, trying to both keep his feet on the uneven terrain _and_ decide which of the two were more likely to catch up with him first. Then his eyes widen and he realizes that that—is maybe the wrong way to think about it.

He staggers to a stop even as his subconscious shrieks at him to keep _going_ , to keep _running_ , that there are _dangerous creatures_ on his tail, and plants one hand against a tree trunk to steady himself as he furiously reworks his existing plan, his existing traps. He swings the backpack on his back around so that he can rip it open and inventory his remaining supplies, and then he makes a decision, spinning in place to head back the way he came.

Malia is gone from the clearing, as he’d expected, the mountain ash circle split by a wide, uneven line; the mark of a dragged, booted heel. Nolan touches careful fingertips to it, crouched down on his heels, and then he bites his lip, and swings his backpack back around, and gets to work.

He’s barely managed to finish his preparations before there’s a crackling of sound across the clearing, and Liam steps out. He’d probably look more threatening if he wasn’t swiping his hands roughly over his face and puffing out his cheeks as he apparently tries to spit something out, but.

“Spiderweb,” He explains after a few undignified seconds, locking eyes with Nolan, and then the goofiness fades from his expression and he grins, sharp and predatory.

His eyes flare golden as he starts to advance, consciously or not, and Nolan sucks in a sharp breath, and takes one step back, and then another. _They’re your friends, but they’re also part animal_ , Argent had told him, _Which means whether or not they want them, they’ve got animal instincts_. Liam’s nostrils flare next, and Nolan has to consciously shut down his instant, instinctive urge to _run_. _You can’t control how they’re going to react to you, even on their best days_ , Argent had told him next, _But you can control how_ you _react to_ them _._

Nolan stops backing up.

“Oh, c’mon,” Liam chides as he stops a few feet away from Nolan, “Don’t just _give up_ , that’s no fun. We’ll call this one a mulligan, I’ll give you a few minutes headstart.”

And then he reaches out a finger to prod Nolan in the shoulder, only to find that he _can’t_.

Liam keeps his finger pressed up against the mountain ash barrier, his expression going dry. “Oh, _very_ clever.” He comments through the shimmering purple haze. “Except I don’t know how you think you’re going to be able to complete Argent’s ridiculous exam from _in there_.”

Nolan just grins, and raises both arms out to the side, and opens his previously-closed fists. Liam’s eyes widen and he goes to take a step back, only now he can’t do _that_ , either, his back colliding with _another_ mountain ash barrier now flaring to life behind him. Yelping, Liam hops back forward and nearly faceplants into the first barrier—the one keeping him from Nolan—and his arms pinwheel for a second before he manages to fully regain his balance. Then he scowls down at the ground, looking for the lines of mountain ash and clearly baffled.

“Now that _was_ clever,” Someone comments from behind Nolan, and Nolan _shouts_ and nearly stumbles backwards in surprise before he remembers that doing so would send him stumbling directly into Liam, and he manages to stop himself.

Theo grins, and starts to walk in a slow circle around Nolan.

“You created a circle-within-a-circle, right?” He double-checks, drawing the shape of it with a finger through the air. “Or,” He stops, correcting himself, “not a _completed_ circle, not on the outside. What’d you have, individual lines leading in from the outside circle, cutting the outside ring into incomplete fourths?”

“Fifths,” Nolan corrects, his voice shaking slightly as he steps around to try and keep Theo in his frontal vision. “I didn’t know what angle he was going to approach me from.”

Theo stops circling, and grins appreciatively, and then repeats, “Like I said, clever.”

And then he starts walking forward.

Nolan immediately starts to retreat, the angle now such that he can do so without stepping into the space that he’d trapped Liam inside of, the two of them now parallel to each other.

“What?” Liam complains as he pokes at the mountain ash barrier, still clearly baffled and trying to find the edges. “What the hell are you two talking about, I don’t get it.”

Theo just smirks, now close enough to Liam to reach a hand through the barrier and ruffle his hair, Liam squawking in outrage and trying to bat his arm away. “I’ll draw you a picture later,” He offers, deliberately smarmy, and then he looks at Nolan and crooks a finger. “C’mon, c’mere and let me tag you. Three out of four isn’t bad.”

And then he takes another step forward, and glass crunches under his boot.

Theo barely has time to look down in horrified surprise before the aerosolized wolfsbane explodes upwards in a plume of purple smoke, enveloping both him and Liam. Liam staggers backwards and collides with the far barrier as Theo goes down on one knee, the both of them coughing and wheezing; Nolan feels a harsh flare of _guilt_ flood his system as he listens to them, Argent’s promise of non-lethality notwithstanding, at least until he realizes that Liam is _laughing_ in between wheezes.

“You arrogant asshole,” He gasps out, bent over with his hands on his knees and his eyes on Theo as he laughs and then coughs, laughs and then coughs. “You totally deserved that.”

Theo tries to glare at him but it’s less than effective through his panting mouth and streaming eyes. Nolan grins, helplessly, and then makes a small, panicked noise when Theo goes to let himself fall backwards onto his ass as the last of the smoke dissipates.

“Wait,” He yelps, and Theo freezes. “Those, uh. Those bulbs are planted all around the edge of the circle I was in. I, um. I didn’t know what angle _you_ were going to approach _Liam_ from,” He explains, his lips curling in a shaky smile.

“Oh, that’s fucking _brilliant!_ ” Liam crows, his rasping voice already returning to normal as his healing clears the wolfsbane from his lungs and system, though he has to stop and hack a little again as his excitement apparently irritates his still-healing throat. “He played you like a _fiddle_.”

Theo makes a face at him, but then he swipes an arm roughly over his face to scrub off the smoke-induced tear-tracks on his cheeks, and reaches for the radio clipped to his jeans. “Argent,” He says as he clicks the _talk_ button and brings it up to his mouth, his eyes coming to rest on Nolan’s and his lips quirking up in a small smile. “It’s done, he got us.”

And Nolan—Nolan _grins_.

\---

Three days later, the sun just starting to get low in the sky, Nolan sits on his car’s hood in the now-familiar Preserve parking lot and concentrates on his idly kicking feet so that he doesn’t start concentrating on his phone, left deliberately in his pocket.

He doesn’t have to wait long. He hears the distinctive muted roar of Theo’s truck getting closer and looks up towards the turn-off from the road, fully expecting to see Theo through the windshield looking longsuffering and Alec in the passenger seat spitting rapid-fire, confused questions at him. But it’s just Alec; he parks Theo’s truck a few spaces away from Nolan’s car and gets out, though he does it—slowly. He takes his time stepping down from the raised cab rather than hopping down with both feet like usual, and he carefully pushes the door closed rather than slamming it shut like he typically does, to Theo’s eternal annoyance.

“Theo let me borrow his truck,” Is the first thing Alec says, hooking a thumb over his shoulder back towards the patently present vehicle, maybe landing on the obvious explanation because his nerves are just as alight as Nolan’s. Or so Nolan wonders, anyway—maybe secretly hopes—because his own nervous system feels like it’s about to vibrate its way free from his skeleton.

“Right,” Nolan blurts out immediately, rotely, and then he realizes he’s still sitting on his car hood and scrambles to jump down, wincing as he hears the scrape of the metal rivets of his jeans against the paint. “Right, um. That was nice of him.”

Alec eyes him strangely, still stood a few feet away by Theo’s truck. “Yeah, it was, I guess,” He agrees. “Though he was acting kind of weird. Actually,” He stops himself abruptly, apparently reconsidering his words. “Theo was acting perfectly normal. _Liam_ was acting kind of weird. Like, kid-in-a-candy-shop, maybe. All excited, barely-contained energy.” He eyes Nolan a little more. “Kind of like you, actually.”

Nolan grimaces, and Alec tips his head sideways as he continues to study him.

“Is this about the big secret everyone has been keeping from me?” He asks curiously; a little warily. “Are you finally going to tell me whatever it is?”

Nolan flinches guiltily at that. He’d sworn everyone to silence about his training with Argent back when he’d first started, and he’d never revoked his request. He’s still not entirely sure _why_ he insisted on it, either. Superstition, maybe.

Fear of failure, maybe.

But: “Yes,” Nolan tells him, a hair too late for it really to come off as a natural response to Alec’s question. “Yes, it’s…about that. And I’m…going to tell you.”

He sounds like a _robot_ , and not like a particularly well programmed one at that. _Get it together_ , he orders himself, and reaches for that place inside himself where the memories of his training with Argent live. Where his _favorite_ memory out of all of them lives, his _touchstone_ memory: Theo smirking up at him from the ground, radio to his lips as he’d told Argent, _it’s done, he got us_. Nolan takes a deep breath.

“Actually, I’m—I’m going to show you,” Nolan corrects, still a little shakily but cored through with certainty.

Alec blinks, clearly not having expected that. But: “Okay,” He says gamely after a few surprised seconds. “Okay, um. What do you need me to do? I mean, uh. Do you need _me_ to do anything, so that you can—can show me?”

“Yes, yeah. I do,” Nolan agrees instantly, seizing on the opening. “I need you to—to,” His briefly quieted-nerves flare right back up, and Nolan has to swallow once and then again before he can restart and then finish his sentence. “I need you to catch me.”

He tips his head back towards the Preserve, though he keeps his eyes fixed on Alec’s face. It’s only because he’s so intently looking that he sees the array of punctuation marks go chasing each other across it, confusion to surprise to hesitation before finally coming to rest on a weary, bleak sort of understanding; Nolan’s heart clenches in his chest at that last one. Alec grimaces, his gaze falling away from Nolan’s to look—literally anywhere else.

“Nolan, that’s not… We don’t need to…” He closes his eyes, clearly frustrated with himself, and Nolan watches his shoulders rise and fall as Alec sucks in a huge, carefully-counted breath and then breathes it back out over an equal span of seconds. He opens his eyes back up, and meets Nolan’s. “You don’t have to prove anything to me,” He concludes quietly, his voice a heartbreaking sort of carefully controlled.

Nolan feels his brow furrow, because that isn’t…because that _wasn’t_ …and then he remembers—starkly and with a flood of embarrassment—his idiotic attempts to—to perform _exposure therapy_ on himself in the immediate aftermath of Alec’s loss of control at the library, constantly forcing himself into Alec’s presence like Alec was some kind of small dark room or very tall ledge that Nolan could acclimate himself to. The hunch of Alec’s shoulders tells him that Alec is remembering the same thing, and Nolan panics.

“No!” He blurts out, too loud; Alec _jumps_. Nolan winces and modulates his volume, but doesn’t allow himself to fall into another embarrassed silence. “No, that’s not—it’s not about proving something to _you_.” He insists, and then he stops. He stops and really forces himself to _think_ , to _consider_ , and then he corrects, more quietly, “It’s not _just_ about proving something to you.”

Alec is eyeing him with a reluctant but apparently unsuppressable sort of skepticism, and Nolan—can’t really blame him.

So he swallows, and tells him; confesses _to_ him, “It’s about proving something to _me_ , too.”

 _That_ makes Alec look fully up, the skepticism melting slowly away to be replaced by curiosity, and then a hesitant sort of hope. Nolan mentally berates himself _again_ , but then he shuts down the sharp, insinuating voice in his head, and instead thinks: _let me show you._

 _Please, let me show you_.

“Do you trust me?” He asks Alec, and realizes he’s said the wrong thing again when Alec’s eyes go wide with his own panic and his mouth starts to drop open. “No, that’s not—!” Nolan tries to correct hastily, and only manages to _over_ -correct, again. He closes his eyes, and reigns in his frustration with himself. “That wasn’t—isn’t—a criticism, or a trick question,” He promises Alec quietly. “It’s just…” But then he can’t think of any way to properly explain it, so he just forces _himself_ to trust _Alec_ and helplessly repeats, “Do you trust me?”

Alec studies him, and Nolan briefly wishes he was less of a mess of a person so that that wouldn’t be such a Herculean undertaking. But he shuts that thought down after only a moment, too, and waits, constantly dragging his gaze back up to Alec’s whenever it falls.

“Yes,” Alec says, eventually. And then more firmly: “Yes, of course, Nolan. I trust you.”

He looks straight at Nolan when he says the last bit, like he’s _willing_ Nolan to believe him. And Nolan—Nolan _does_ , so he smiles—shaky, but real—and takes a half-step back towards the Preserve.

“Then _catch_ me,” Nolan repeats, more strongly this time, raising his arms out to the side in a dare and taking another half-step back onto the ball of one foot, waiting; waiting.

Alec still looks confused but he no longer looks a half-disguised sort of _sad_ , and as he stands and stares at Nolan his eyes start to narrow. Nolan waits, holding his wide-open position—arms out and chin up, all the vulnerable parts of himself exposed—and then Alec nods. Just once, just a sharp little jerk of his head.

“Okay,” He says, and takes a step forward.

Adrenaline spikes through Nolan’s system but he forces it down, forces it _out_ ; out through his veins to the tips of his fingers. Out to the balls of his feet, the crooked arch of his half-raised foot, prepared to run.

He takes his own step back.

And then another, and another, as Alec continues coming forward, faster and faster until Nolan has to stop backing up and pivot to start running _forward_ , his legs and arms pumping. But he keeps track of his steps— _twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six_ —and at thirty he stops, and spins back around, hopping some on his back foot for balance and to shed momentum as he watches, and waits.

Alec’s brow furrows in confusion, Nolan can see it even from where he’s standing, and then he starts to slow. He starts to slow, but then he _stops_. And not just stops but staggers _backwards_ , hands flying reflexively over his ears and a wounded, surprised sound escaping his lips.

When he looks back up at Nolan his eyes are flared, but his teeth past his panting lips are human-blunt, and his fingertips are, too.

“What…?” He breathes, his hands falling slowly from his ears, but Nolan just stands his ground.

 _Catch me_ , he mouths, and this time waits just long enough for Alec’s flared-golden eyes to narrow and his hunched-in shoulders to straighten before turning and taking off further into the Preserve.

Nolan runs with purpose, weaving in and out of the trees and deliberately brushing up against low-hanging branches, and reaching out stretched-out fingers to drag them along rough-edged rocks as he passes them. He keeps a mental map of the Preserve fixed in his mind the whole time, calculating and calculating the overlapping circles of his planted emitters, his eyes seeking out and catching the identifying marks he’d left for himself on tree trunks and boulders. It won’t take Alec long to figure out that he can’t follow Nolan directly—he’d likely _already_ figured it out, what with Nolan’s initial demonstration—and Nolan knows he’ll adjust fast; Alec knows these woods too, after all, from all his patrols with Theo.

But Alec isn’t Theo, or Malia, and he’s too good-hearted, even with his instincts up—with his instincts that _have to be_ up, Nolan’s carefully plotted course designed to do just that—to suspect a trap. Nolan can hear Alec close and getting closer behind himself as he runs into a clearing—a different, smaller one than the one he’d used to trap Malia—and sprints for the other side before skidding to a sudden, mostly-graceful stop and spinning around to face Alec as he comes into the clearing.

Alec quickly slows to a walk when he sees that Nolan has stopped, one hand coming up to clutch at his side and the other rising to wipe sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand. “Jesus,” He pants out. “Someone’s been working out.”

It’s clear he thinks Nolan’s _whatever_ is over, a quirked and indulgent smile on his face as he continues to make his way across the clearing. Nolan just keeps his eyes on Alec and his expression as neutral as he can get it, and waits, and _waits_.

And then, when Alec is three-quarters of the way across the clearing, Nolan drops to his haunches and slams an open palm down on the dirt just as Alec takes one last, fateful step and then looks down in blank surprise at the tripwire he’d just tripped.

The immediate sunburst of light is bright, and blinding, even with his eyes squeezed tightly shut, and Nolan spends a good few seconds after the silent explosion of the flash grenade blinking colored spots out of his vision. But that’s _nothing_ compared to Alec, who’d yelped in surprise and slapped his hands over his eyes, too late, and who’d stumbled back a few reflexive steps and right into the border of the circle that Nolan’s fistful of mountain ash had completed.

He hits it and bounces back forward with another surprised sound, his hands falling away from his eyes as he tries to see what he’d run into. There’s no way he can see it fully yet, though, the subtle haze of the barrier already almost faded and almost definitely imperceptible through Alec’s momentarily disabled vision, and Nolan has to bite down on his tongue to stop himself from calling out, from explaining.

Instead he stays crouched where he is, once more vibrating with held-back tension, and waits.

It takes another half-minute or so for Alec to finish blinking his vision back to normal, Alec shaking his head every handful of seconds to try and speed up the process, and when it does Alec immediately seeks Nolan out. He sees him crouching on the ground and frowns, but doesn’t move to try and approach him, not yet. Instead he stretches out a slow, careful hand and jumps only a little when his fingertips hit the barrier, sending the air between himself and Nolan into a shimmering, purple wall.

“Oh,” Alec breathes, his eyes roving over the constantly shifting array of colors. He presses harder against the barrier and the colors burst into even greater light, spreading out from his fingertips like ripples away from a dropped stone. “Oh, Nolan…”

Nolan still doesn’t speak, partially because he _can’t_ , his throat closed-up and even his still-planted hand trembling, but mostly because Alec is still wonderingly studying the mountain ash barrier, dragging his fingertips along the edge of it as he steps and steps and steps around it in a circle, following it around until his fingertips once more rest where they’d started. A spike of panic drives through Nolan’s chest as he watches, _what if, what if, what if Alec doesn’t like being trapped_ running through his head, but Alec doesn’t look scared, or concerned. He looks _fascinated._

Finally he drops his eyes down from the barrier to Nolan, his hand falling away so that the haze of the barrier falls, too. “You, uh. You clearly had a busy month.” He comments, a forced sort of lightness in his tone that seems to be covering up the way his eyes are wide and his cheeks are flushed with something that looks a lot like _excitement_.

And that’s his opening, his invitation, so Nolan forces himself to rise on unsteady legs and nods. “Seemed only fair,” He replies, trying to match Alec’s cheerful tone, but his voice is shaking, and his now-dangling hands are, too.

But Alec doesn’t look at them, his eyes fixed on Nolan’s face. “It was more than that,” He disagrees gently, and this time all the joking is gone from his voice; Nolan swallows at the sound of Alec’s raw sincerity and can’t help looking away, one hand starting to rise to clasp his opposite elbow in a reflexive, self-conscious hunch.

But he catches himself doing it, and forces himself to stop, to straighten up. Alec watches him as he does it, patient inside the mountain ash barrier separating them, and Nolan takes a deep breath, and meets Alec’s eyes.

“This isn’t—this isn’t all I learned,” Nolan tells him, raising his arms and gesturing around to capture the Preserve, and the maze of emitters that had forced Alec—knowingly or not—to this spot, and into the mountain ash circle. He drops them again and bites his lip, fighting with the clawed uncertainty in his chest until he can offer, “Do you—do you want to see the rest?”

“Yes,” Alec says immediately, and then flushes, some of the confidence he’d been wearing so well falling away as he apparently berates himself for responding too fast, too eagerly. “Yes,” He repeats, more calmly, and gives Nolan a wobbly smile. “Please.”

And so Nolan nods, and Alec nods back, and then Nolan stills and looks Alec straight in the eye and says, “Then shift, please. All—all the way.”

Alec looks stunned at the request, initially, and then he looks hesitant with a perfectly visible undercurrent of trepidation right underneath it. Nolan nearly says _please_ again but then forces himself to swallow the word, forces himself to wait as Alec’s internal struggle plays out starkly across his—still human—face. But finally Alec straightens his own unconsciously hunching shoulders and nods, once, and then closes his eyes, very tightly.

When he opens them back up they’re golden, and framed all around by his shifted features.

Nolan’s first immediate, instinctive reaction is _fear_ , memory like one of Argent’s flash grenades going off in his mind as he sees Alec as he _was_ , back in the library and looking so, so very heartbreakingly similar; Alec’s shifted face starts to fall as he apparently catches Nolan’s accelerated pulse, or stinging scent, or some other involuntary, biological marker of Nolan’s fear.

But it opens right back up in surprise when Nolan’s second, _conscious_ reaction is to take a deliberate step forward, over the mountain ash barrier.

Nolan’s unexpected approach means that Alec has to stumble back a single step so that they don’t collide, but he doesn’t go far. Nolan isn’t sure if that’s because he doesn’t _want_ to, or because his surprise is still gluing his feet to the ground, but either way the proximity means that Nolan doesn’t have to reach far in order to grasp one of Alec’s hands in between his own.

“I learned this, too,” Nolan explains quietly, bringing Alec’s captured hand up until he can flatten it against his own chest, right over his heart; right over his slowing heartbeat, and steadily working lungs, Alec’s fingers long enough that the clawed tips of them are just brushing the side of Nolan’s throat.

And now it’s _Alec’s_ heartbeat that’s unsteady, Nolan feeling the pulse of it beating heavy in Alec’s fingers pressed to his chest, and it’s _Alec’s_ lungs that are working unevenly, Nolan seeing the shuddering way his shoulders rise, and fall. His hand spasms against Nolan’s chest, his clawed fingertips briefly curving in against Nolan’s throat, and Alec makes a wounded, panicked noise and goes to yank it back, but Nolan just follows him, keeps his hand where Nolan had placed it.

“I can’t promise I won’t ever be afraid,” Nolan confesses to him, all in a tangled rush. “I—I can’t…there probably always _will be_ a part of me that’s afraid. But it doesn’t have to be the part that matters, right?” He asks, a little desperately, his human-blue eyes searching Alec’s shifted-gold ones. “I can choose—” _to fight_ “—which part matters. I can choose—” _not to fight_ “—to let something else matter _more_.”

He drops Alec’s hands so that he can take Alec’s face between his palms instead, holding Alec’s head steady as he looks at him.

“ _I_ trust _you_ ,” Nolan tells him, and rides out the full-body shudder Alec gives, his eyes briefly closing with a hurt noise. Nolan waits until Alec has blinked his still-golden eyes back open to say next, “ _I_ trust _me_ , too,” and then he tightens his grip around Alec’s head and presses their foreheads together, his own eyes squeezing shut involuntarily as he concludes, “ _Alec_. Alec, I trust _us_.”

Alec makes another helpless, harsh noise, and then it’s Nolan’s turn as Alec suddenly surges forward against him, pressing their lips together.

Alec almost immediately pulls back, looking panicked. “I’m sorry, that wasn’t—”

But he doesn’t get to finish, because Nolan surges forward into _him_ , knocking him back a few paces until Alec can get his balance back and steady them, his hands—his _clawed_ hands—coming to grip at Nolan’s hips. But Nolan only feels the bite of his claws for a second, less, before the sensation is melting away into the blunter press of Alec’s human fingernails. Nolan pulls back to look at him.

“I learned some things, too,” Alec offers, smiling small and helplessly, and Nolan feels an answering grin take over his face.

“Show me,” He breathes, his fingers still framing Alec’s face and tightening. “Alec. _Alec_. _Show me_.”

And Alec _does_ , ducking to press his mouth back to Nolan’s and pressing his tongue forward, licking inside when Nolan immediately drops his lips open and then—and then drawing Nolan’s tongue back into his own mouth, past the edges of his blunt human teeth. Nolan pulls back just long enough to see Alec’s still-shifted eyes, and then he gives a harsh, high moan and surges back forward, trusting Alec to steady them as he kisses Alec, and kisses Alec, and kisses Alec.

“Jesus, _jesus_ ,” Alec pants a few minutes or a few hundred years later, ripping his mouth away from Nolan’s and leaning back as he gasps for air. “Okay, okay. You should—you should break this circle so we can go—go _somewhere_ , and I can keep—keep showing you what I learned.”

But Nolan just feels a sly smile take his mouth, and he leans forward to nip at the edge of Alec’s tilted-up jaw, feeling some of his old—his old _you’re-_ enjoying _-making-me-lose-control-of-the-shift_ mischief come flooding back. Grinning against Alec’s skin, he drops his hands to the button of Alec’s jeans and starts working it free, starts sliding the zipper down.

“Show me here,” Nolan counters, low and insinuating, his chest _flaring_ with pride and satisfaction when Alec looks down at him with shock and more than a little _arousal_ flushing his cheeks.

And then Nolan drops to his knees.

“Oh, oh christ,” Alec gasps, his eyes darting away from Nolan’s and heavenward as Nolan reaches into the open _V_ of his jeans and into his boxers to grasp his now rock-hard cock, draw it out and into the open air. “Oh, we’re going to be in so much trouble if we get caught. _I_ am going to be in so much trouble if we get caught.”

“So don’t let us get caught,” Nolan orders him, deliberately letting his lips drag against the sensitive head of Alec’s cock as he does. Alec glances down at him helplessly and Nolan grins against the side of him, tells him, “Better keep those shifted ears peeled.”

And then he swallows Alec down, barely hearing Alec’s loud, breathy moan at his words.

Nolan has to close his eyes at the first swell of sensation, Alec hot and heavy on his tongue. In his darker moments over the past month, sweaty and exhausted and having failed more than he’d succeeded at Argent’s ridiculous training, he’d despaired for ever having this again, for ever having _Alec_ again, and relief shudders liquid and helpless down his spine. But he has Alec here, and he has Alec _now_ , and he’s going to have him tomorrow, and the day after that, and the blossoming revelation of that thought causes _him_ to moan, Alec’s thighs shivering under his bracing hands as the sound no-doubt travels through his cock, and Nolan—Nolan gets to work.

He tightens the seal of his lips, and bobs his head, his tongue pressing up, up against the sensitive vein running alongside the bottom of Alec’s cock. He can feel it when Alec _bows_ helplessly over him, the fabric of Alec’s shirt just brushing the top of Nolan’s head before Alec moans and manages to straighten back up. But that causes something to occur to Nolan, and he pulls off of Alec with a slick sound that goes straight to his _own_ cock.

“Alec,” He chastises, surprised and more than a little turned on by the rasp already present in his own voice. “C’mon.”

Alec looks down at him, wide-eyed and uncomprehending, and so Nolan reaches out and takes hold of one his hands and plants it on his shoulder, and then reaches out for the other hand and plants it directly on top of his head. Alec’s grip spasms, catching in his hair and tugging deliciously at some of the strands, but Alec just looks immediately panicked and tries to pull it away.

Nolan catches it again, and puts it back. “Alec,” He repeats, more gently this time. “I trust you, remember?” He reminds him, and then he smiles—gently, sincerely—up at him and says, “You’ve got to trust you, too.”

And then he leans right back down without waiting for an answer, and swallows Alec right back down.

“Oh my _god_ ,” Alec wails softly, but he leaves his hand where Nolan had placed it, and it doesn’t take him long to _tighten_ it, gripping Nolan’s hair and causing Nolan to shudder and groan around him.

He doesn’t push, or pull—he never had before, either—but Nolan knows the touch grounds him, knows that Alec knows that the touch grounds _Nolan_ , and he presses up against it best he can while keeping to the rhythm of his bobbing head, his stroking tongue. He also moves one hand off of Alec’s thigh, tracing it around the edge of Alec’s jeans until he reaches the base of Alec’s cock and he can drag it _down_ , down until he reaches Alec’s balls, hanging heavy between his legs. Nolan cups them in his palm and rolls them gently, and knows that Alec has shoved a hand against his mouth to control his response because the cry he gives as Nolan does it is muffled.

The thigh still under Nolan’s other hand starts to tremble, and Nolan knows Alec is getting close. He’d have known anyway, because Alec’s hand in his hair starts to tug in warning, trying to gently pull him off. Nolan just shakes his head best he can and tightens his gripping fingers, leaning forward even _more_ to take Alec even deeper at the same time that he gives Alec’s balls a gentle squeeze.

Alec’s muffling hand barely manages to mute his shout as he comes.

Nolan gentles him through it as best he can, keenly aware of Alec’s shaking legs and the fact that Alec is standing in free-air with nothing behind or to the side of him to lean on. Letting Alec’s softening cock slip from his mouth, Nolan straightens up on his knees so that Alec can more easily brace against him, wrapping his arms around the back of Alec’s thighs and over his ass so he can grip his back, helping steady him as Alec continues to gasp through the aftershocks, his hands coming to land and then lean heavily on Nolan’s shoulders.

“Oh, oh my _god_ ,” Alec repeats at a shellshocked whisper. “Oh my _god_.”

Nolan grins against Alec’s still-shivering stomach. “Oh no,” He murmurs, looking up and bracing his chin against Alec’s lower abdomen. “Did I break you?”

Alec freezes, some, and looks down at him. His eyes are still pleasure-clouded but they clear fast at Nolan’s tease, and then he scowls and slides his hands down from Nolan’s shoulders and then up and underneath his arms, hauling him to his feet. Nolan wonders if he realizes that he’d used his supernatural strength to do it, and can’t help the grin that overtakes his face as he staggers to find his balance, Alec’s hands dropping to his waist to help steady him, too.

“‘Did I break you?’” Alec repeats, high and mocking as he drops his hands to get his now soft cock tucked pack into his pants, buttoning and zipping his jeans back up. “‘Did I break you,’ he says, like he didn’t just give me one of the best blowjobs of my _life_ in the middle of a _forest_. What the _fuck_.”

He’s pretty much muttering to himself at this point, but he catches Nolan’s eyes as he finishes, and his expression softens into a small smile.

“Hey,” He mumbles, suddenly shy, and Nolan feels an absolute _wave_ of affection wash over him, and he surges up to take Alec’s mouth, kissing him deep.

Alec lets out another of those small, surprised sounds but recovers quickly, his arms coming up to wrap tight and then tighter around Nolan’s back. They stay like that for a minute or so, just kissing, and then Alec pulls back and rests his forehead against Nolan’s, his breath gently panting against Nolan’s lips.

“Nolan,” He murmurs. “Nolan, please, can I…?” He asks, and slides one his hands down and around Nolan’s side to his stomach and then _down_ , until he can press his palm lightly against Nolan’s straining cock, still trapped in his jeans.

Nolan nods frantically against Alec’s forehead. “I might die if you don’t,” He confesses desperately, only half-joking, and Alec grins back like he’s feeling the same thing, the same twitching energy flow through his veins.

“Makes two of us,” Alec assures him, and then he gets the button popped and the zipper pulled down so that he can slide his hand down, down into Nolan’s boxers until he can wrap it around Nolan’s cock.

Nolan moans loudly and then flushes as the sound echoes around the empty stretch of trees around them, dropping his head to Alec’s shoulder and opening his mouth around the meat of Alec’s jacket, his shirt—the muscle underneath—as Alec tightens his grip and starts to stroke. The press of Alec’s fingers causes Nolan to bite down harder, which causes _Alec’s_ fingers to spasm tighter, and for a few seconds it’s a mind-blowing feedback loop until Alec suddenly withdraws his hand from Nolan’s pants, Nolan moaning at the loss.

But Alec’s just muttering, “Okay, okay, _focus_ , Alec,” to himself, the routine just so quintessentially _Alec_ and so quintessentially touching that Nolan has to press up on his toes to find his mouth, kiss him again. Alec groans against his lips and then presses Nolan lightly back down by the shoulders, looking him in the eye as he says, “Okay, there’s just—a lot going on right now, and you—you—you are _way too_ _attractive_ for me to handle with the—the biting, and the _kissing_ , so you just—just—”

He pauses, and leaves one hand on Nolan’s shoulder as he takes a half-step back, holding Nolan in place even as Nolan frowns at him.

“—just _stay there_ , okay?” He finishes, and his eyes are a little pleading when Nolan catches them. “I want—I want to look at you, okay?”

Nolan feels his breath hitch, arousal and—and _something else_ bolting through him, but he manages a dumb nod. Alec smiles, soft and wobbly, and brings the hand not on Nolan’s shoulder back to Nolan’s stomach, pressing his palm flat and then sliding it back down, down until he can wrap it back around Nolan’s cock.

“Oh,” Nolan gasps, and rises up on his toes some; Alec’s eyes are riveted on his face, and that—that just sends the arousal spiraling even _higher_. “Oh, oh god. _Alec_.”

Alec seems to get what Nolan hadn’t even been sure he’d been asking for, and slides the hand he’d had on Nolan’s shoulder up his neck and over until he’s cupping Nolan’s jaw. Until his thumb is resting just on Nolan’s lips, and Nolan moans gratefully and opens his mouth, catching Alec’s thumb between his teeth when Alec bends it purposefully low so that he can bite _down_.

This time it’s _Alec’s_ turn to moan, low and helpless, but his rhythm around Nolan’s cock doesn’t falter, stripping it hard and fast. At first Nolan had thought Alec had left him tucked inside his boxers because they are, in fact, still in the middle of the Preserve, but he’s beginning to think it’s _more_ than that, the cramped space changing the angle and the rhythm in ways that Nolan isn’t used to, that he can’t predict, and he squirms helplessly, panting against Alec’s thumb between his teeth and pressing up against Alec’s hand.

“ _Hng, hng_ ,” Nolan groans around Alec’s thumb, his legs starting to shake and his hands rising to grip desperately at Alec’s collar, trying to keep himself upright.

“I’ve got you,” Alec murmurs, bringing Nolan forward some so their foreheads are resting together. “I’ve got you, Nolan, c’mon.”

“Alec, I’m going to—I’m going to—” _make a complete mess of the pants I have to wear out of here_ , Nolan realizes, and then he gasps in surprise and more than a little arousal when Alec’s bracing hand and bracing forehead suddenly disappear as he _drops_ , his now-free hand coming forward in an impressive show of agility to get Nolans’ boxers pulled back, exposing the tip of Nolan’s cock so that Alec can get his lips around it just as Nolan comes. “Oh _god_ ,” Nolan wails, long and drawn out and low, his hands falling to grasp and then claw at Alec’s shoulders as he shakes, and trembles, and shudders his way through his orgasm.

Alec holds Nolan gently between his lips until he stops twitching with aftershocks, and then he—he _swallows_ easily, and presses a kiss to the side of Nolan’s softening cock, and starts to try to rise. But Nolan just makes a soft, protesting sound and presses down on his shoulders, holding him there until he feels Alec relax back onto his heels. He’s probably looking up at Nolan quizzically but Nolan can’t tell, his eyes still squeezed shut as his brain finishes coming back online, even as he gets himself readjusted and his jeans zipped and buttoned back up. That done, he blinks his eyes open and smiles softly down at Alec, and then all but flops down onto his knees, too.

“Hey,” He murmurs when he and Alec are of a height, parroting Alec’s earlier, shy greeting back at him.

Alec stares at him for a moment, and then he starts to laugh, low and breathy and helpless. After a few seconds he covers his face with his hands, still laughing, and Nolan stares at him in surprise for a few seconds and then starts to laugh, too. Pretty soon they’re both cracking up, the last of the tension—a month’s worth of tension, a thousand unspoken fears’ worth of tension—cracks and splinters between them, and Nolan lunges forward until he can get his arms around Alec’s shoulders, Alec dropping his hands away from his face with a startled sound to catch him.

They both go tumbling backwards as Alec overbalances and falls, Alec tightening his arms around Nolan as they land to soften the blow. Even once they’re flat Nolan keeps his face buried in Alec’s neck, still laughing in breathy, unpredictable spurts, feeling Alec’s pulse beat against his cheek and Alec’s hands tracing gentle, wandering patterns over his back as Alec turns, and presses his lips to the top of Nolan’s head.

Finally, after a few minutes, after their laughing-quick, and sex-quick, and _relief_ -quick heartbeats have slowed, and their panting breaths have evened back out into steady, easy gusts—Nolan’s body rising and falling with every inhale, every exhale of Alec’s chest below him—Nolan rises up some so that he can look down at Alec, study his face. Alec looks back up at him, bringing a hand up to trace it gently across Nolan’s brow, the curve of his cheek.

Nolan closes his eyes, and turns into the touch for a brief, held moment, and then he opens them back up and turns to smile back down at Alec.

“Hey Alec,” He says, once he catches Alec’s eyes again. “Welcome home.”

And Alec’s face splits into a wide, helpless smile, and he surges upward to kiss Nolan and then roll him carefully over to press him down, down into the earth. And Nolan—Nolan reaches out searching fingers until he can find Alec’s hands, and slide his fingers in between Alec’s own, holding them fast, holding them hard—just like he’d been holding Alec’s hand at the library that night, Alec’s fingers resting against the back of Nolan’s palms, where the faintest white lines still show—and he kisses him.

He just holds on tight, and kisses him.

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Edit by [snaeken](https://thehmmwv.tumblr.com/) [here](https://snaeken.tumblr.com/post/189391063231/i-learned-some-things-too-alec-offers-smiling)!

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**Author's Note:**

> All feedback loved! If you liked, please consider a comment or a [reblog](https://eneiryu.tumblr.com/post/189298752590/dredging-the-ruins-of-who-you-thought-youd-be)!


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